She was wearing a black satin mask when they first met in 1923, and in a sense she wore a mask--that of the dutiful wife and helpmeet--throughout their 52-year marriage. Especially after the American publication of Lolita made her husband notorious in 1958, Véra Nabokov's presence at her husband's side was crucial, writes her biographer Stacy Schiff: "[It] kept the fiction in its place, reassured readers ... that Nabokov's perversities were of a different kind." But Véra Slonim (1902-91) was essential to Vladimir Nabokov's literary career from the beginning. She had a gift for handling practical matters that her spouse proudly lacked; she screened him from his publishers and his admirers with equal firmness, and in doing so she liberated him to fulfill the artistic genius they both believed he possessed. Praised for a previous biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Schiff here cements her reputation as a literary biographer of striking subtlety and perceptiveness. She establishes a strong base in chapter 1 with her excellent analysis of Véra Slonim's youth in a privileged Russian Jewish family in St. Petersburg. She then pursues her subject's elusive personality through hints in Nabokov's work and the comments of friends and colleagues. Schiff's elegant prose and eye for nuance nearly match Nabokov himself in this lucid, unsentimental portrait of a marriage. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
V?ra Nabokov was not only devoted to her husband's literary career; she was crucial to it. Schiff (Saint-Exup?ry) contends that Nabokov's public image was V?ra's doing: "we are used to husbands silencing wives, but here was a wife silencing, editing, speaking for, creating, her husband." For almost all their married lives, the Nabokovs were inseparable. Russian ?migr?s in Germany, France and then the U.S., they eked out a bare existence despite Nabokov's reputation as a stellar Russian novelist. With no market for his writing, he needed his wife to work as a translator so they could survive. After hours she also edited and translated his writings, conducted his professional affairs and maintained their marriage. Only the runaway international success of Lolita when they were in their later 50s freed the couple from scraping together a living. (A film advance gave Nabokov 17 times his annual salary at Cornell, a post that had taken years to secure.) Suddenly flush, the Nabokovs, by choice, again became ?migr?s, wealthy residents of a Swiss luxury hotel. Schiff's best pages evoke the years of adversity, as when the Jewish V?ra, regal even in penury, perilously remained in Nazi Germany until May 1937 (after non-Jewish Vladimir exited) because it was the only country where either one could legally work. Often described as "hovering" over her husband by his Cornell colleagues, V?ra was always close byAeven working as his teaching assistantAbecause, according to Schiff, he simply could not function without her. This book offers more than a peek at the famous author through his wife's eyes. When her 1991 New York Times obit called V?ra "Wife, Muse, and Agent" it only hinted at her role, which is rescued from obscurity in Schiff's graceful prose. 16 pages of b&w photos. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Of all the symbiotic relationships writers have had with their spouses, none surpasses that of Nabokov and his remarkable wife, Vera. So says another woman of substance, biographer Schiff, whose impressive research is on par with the exquisite writing style with which she relates the details of the Nabokovs' lives. Her task was no doubt made harder by the Nabokovs' devotion to each other, where veracity often took a back seat to defending their loved one. Insights into the character of "V.N.," as Vera lovingly called her husband, are included, but center stage in this riveting portrait belongs to Vera, whose genius equaled her husband's but who tenaciously embraced what she saw as her role in life, to "help him." Beautiful, vibrant, and passionate, she disputed every attempt by others to elevate her station in the relationship or her importance to the work her husband produced. Anna Field's intelligent narration is necessary to convey the life of such a woman adequately. Highly recommended.Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NCCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Lyndall Gordon
[T]he triumph of Véra is not just in providing entrée to her famous husband. She fascinates in her own right.

The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
...Ms. Schiff has succeeded in creating an elegantly nuanced portrait of the artist's wife, showing us just how pivotal Nabokov's marriage was to his hermetic existence and how it indelibly shaped his work. She effortlessly conjures up the disparate worlds the couple inhabited...

From AudioFile
This is a subtle and canny biography of a very smart but prickly woman. Véra Nabokov was far from being the first or only love of Vladimir's life, yet she managed to so intertwine herself in his personal, intellectual, and literary endeavors that it becomes difficult, or impossible, to separate her from him. VŽra attended all of Nabokov's lectures, often graded his students' papers, typed almost all his manuscripts and letters, and herself wrote many of the letters he signed. Granted, Nabokov was a great artist, but there is so much strange ego in VŽra's submersion of self in this marriage that one can't quite tell if it's love or pathology. Anna Fields does a generally fine job reading, though when it comes to pronouncing unfamiliar place names and foreign words, she seems to have been left to make things up. (Shouldn't the audio publisher take some responsibility for accuracy in pronunciation, as a print publisher does in copyediting for textual mistakes? And while we're at it, should it worry us that Vladimir is misspelled on the audiobook's front cover?) B.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews
The fascinating story of a modern woman who made a life-long career as her husband's intellectual companion, secretary, manager, and guardian angel. When in 1925 exiled Jewish Saint-Petersburger Vra Slonim (190291) married Vladimir Nabokov, a brilliant Russian aristocrat and promising writer, she entered into a covenant with art itself. Through 52 years of marriage and for 14 years after her spouse's demise, she saw the sole meaning of her life as nourishing Nabokov and safeguarding his works and image for posterity. During the lean Berlin years, Vra provided the lion's share of the family's income through her work as a translator. Her dedication helped her to weather Vladimir's tumultuous 1937 affair with Irina Guadanini. While Nabokov masqueraded as a literature professor at Wellesley and Cornell, his wife conducted research for his lectures, which she typed and occasionally even delivered in his stead. After the success of Lolita catapulted her husband to celebrity in the 1950s, Mrs. Nabokov served as his unique liaison with publishers, lawyers, and the media. Vra indulged Nabokov's every whim, treating him as a protective mother would a child prodigy, carrying books after him across the Cornell campus, committing to memory every word he uttered, and chaperoning him on butterfly hunts. Schiff skillfully presents Vra Nabokov as a living paradox. To some, she was uptight, self-righteous, and snooty, to others, charming and friendly. She forbade her son to read Mark Twain for moral reasons, but unhesitatingly endorsed Lolita. Purposefully skirting the limelight, she was at her husband's side at all interviews and receptions. Throughout two decades spent in the United States, Vra never stopped ridiculing American provincialism and lack of taste. After the Nabokovs settled in Switzerland, however, she became an ardent advocate of the country she had so eagerly deserted, even justifying the Vietnam War. Schiff's entertaining biography powerfully argues that in effacing herself for her husband's aggrandizement, Vra Nabokov entered history arm in arm with one of the century's greatest men of letters. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"        A sensitive rendering of one of the century's great love stories."--Mirabella

"        I am truly in love with this book. Schiff's sentences are magnificent, deceptively complex, full of insight and fact and distance and wry humor, so that every page is a kind of mini feast."--Anita Shreve

"        An absorbing story, illumined by Schiff's flair for the succinct insight."
        --The New York Times Book Review

"        Véra is an astonishingly fine book--a tale told with wit and elegance, a tale that succeeds in encompassing both the intimacy of a marriage and the sweep of history. I found it a great pleasure to read. And I'm in awe of Stacy Schiff's talent."--Jonathan Harr

Review
"        A sensitive rendering of one of the century's great love stories."--Mirabella

"        I am truly in love with this book. Schiff's sentences are magnificent, deceptively complex, full of insight and fact and distance and wry humor, so that every page is a kind of mini feast."--Anita Shreve

"        An absorbing story, illumined by Schiff's flair for the succinct insight."
        --The New York Times Book Review

"        Véra is an astonishingly fine book--a tale told with wit and elegance, a tale that succeeds in encompassing both the intimacy of a marriage and the sweep of history. I found it a great pleasure to read. And I'm in awe of Stacy Schiff's talent."--Jonathan Harr

Book Description

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all.

"Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.


From the Inside Flap

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all.

"Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.

ANNOTATION

2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for Biography.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov-the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory-wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all. "Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine-a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.

FROM THE CRITICS

Louise DeSalvo - Chicago Tribune

Illuminating...a superb portrait.

Clarence Brown - The Seattle Times

Absorbing, often wildly amusing, and deeply moving.

Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times

...[E]vocative....[A]n elegantly nuanced portrait...showing us just how pivotal Nabokov's marriage was to his hermetic existence and how it indelibly shaped his work....[Vera was] a formidable challenge for a biographer — a challenge that Ms. Schiff, with this book, has most persuasively met.

Lydall Gordon - The New York Times Book Review

...Schiff does not attempt to explain away the enigma that Véra presents....[The book] will not reveal the substance of her passion to people who haven't read the novels; instead it details the trivia that surround publication....This portrait of a 52-year marriage...opens up Nabokov's private life....[Vra] fascinates in her own right...

Library Journal - Ronald Ray Ratliff, Chapman High School Library, KS

Vladimir Nabokov's works have come to the attention of the public again with the publication of Library of America editions and the recent film version of Lolita. Several years ago, Brian Boyd produced a two-volume definitive biography: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Schiff's book distinguishes itself by focusing on the relationship between Vladimir and his wife Véra, a marriage that lasted some 50 years. Schiff (Saint Exupery) traces the years in France and Germany before World War II, followed by a hurried immigration to the United States and Nabokov's eventual literary success. Schiff also handles the difficulties within the marriage, including affairs. Through it all, the couple forged a close alliance as Véra oversaw the editing of manuscripts, translation, the negotiation of contracts, and much of Vladimir's correspondence. The result is a scholarly, readable look at a remarkable literary duo. Read all 14 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A Q&A with the Author:

Q: Why write about an unknown like Vera Nabokov, a woman who lived her life in the shadows?

In brief, Mrs. Nabokov struck me as the greatest influence on one of the great writers of our time. The couple's marriage was exceptionally close; theirs was clearly a great love story. And yet Nabokov's biographers, all of whom were working in Vera's lifetime, kept writing around her. The shadows appeared very much of Mrs. Nabokov's making, which was an invitation in itself. It seemed to me too that V￯﾿ﾽra would prove an oblique (and revealing) angle from which to approach her husband. Her story might not reveal new layers in the work, but it would tell us a great deal about its author.

Q: Did she write the books?

No. But she made it possible -- sometimes mandatory -- for her husband to write them. And she clearly worked a little editorial magic at the typewriter, where she transcribed nearly every word Nabokov published. Her other contributions were ancillary: She wrote out her memories of their son's early days for Speak, Memory. She composed drafts of the glorious Lectures on Literature. Her observations made their way into Lolita. The list goes on.

Q: What was she like?

Brilliant, self-disciplined, beautiful, noble, principled in the extreme. She made a huge impression, often for the wrong reasons. Here was a "housewife" who went to New York State's Tompkins County clerk to register a handgun in l955. Those who knew this jumped to the obvious conclusion: Mrs. Nabokov was on the warpath. Somehow it never occurred to anyone that perhaps she owned a .38 because she was afraid. Especially after her butterfly-chasing husband stepped on a slumbering bear in Yosemite.

Q: What did she think of Lolita?

She thought the book a work of genius. Her one gripe on publication was with the critics' tendency to blame Lolita and pity Humbert. She felt they were obtuse: Why couldn't they stop searching for symbols and focus instead on Lolita's helplessness, her pathetic dependence on a monster, her heartrending courage?

Q: Was Nabokov faithful to her?

For the most part. As is clear from the prose, he was exquisitely sensitive to beauty of all kinds, feminine beauty not least of all. And as his wife well knew, he was an instinctive flirt. In l937 the marriage nearly foundered when he had a passionate affair; friends wondered how he would be able to leave Vera, so integral was she to the work. You might say that the answer was that he couldn't.

Q: But did he always love her? The two were married for 52 years.

The love letters of the l960's are, if anything, more tender than those of the l920's. One of my favorite descriptions was that of a visitor who spent time with the couple on the Riviera, in early l960. In the course of a walk one evening Vera darted across a major avenue, through multiple lanes of traffic, for a closer look at an Alfa Romeo she admired. Her husband blanched; he nearly fainted when she then recrossed against the light. As their visitor observed, Mrs. Nabokov returned to "our sidewalk in a fine mood, having risked her life, in her little black suit and high-heeled shoes, very innocent and merry, out of a froth of passing cars. She sure knew how to keep her man alive."

copyright Stacy Schiff 1999  — Stacy Schiff

Véra Nabokov emerges from these pages a steely but lonely character, far more complex than Vladimir. Stacy Schiff's triumph is that she has put in all the tones and half-tones in this shaded portrait of the brilliant writer's inspired and inspiring collaborator. — Edmund White

Véra is a beautiful book. Built on a heroic scalde, it is subtle, intimate, and richly argued. Almost every page projects a truly remarkable woman and her part as tutelary spirit in the work of a great writer. Has there ever been a literary marriage as productive, complex, and intriguing as this one? — Justin Kaplan