"This is the first comprehensive account of Nabokov's life and oeuvre. The book's wide-ranging research and deep affinity for Nabokov's writings should establish it as the single indispensable source on its subject for many decades to come."--Simon Karlinsky, University of California, Berkeley This first major critical biography of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest of twentieth-century writers, finally allows us full access to the dramatic details of his life and the depths of his art. An intensely private man, Nabokov was uprooted first by the Russian Revolution and then by World War II. Transformed into a permanent wanderer, he did not achieve fame until late in life, with the success of Lolita. In this first of two volumes, Brian Boyd vividly describes the liberal milieu of the aristocratic Nabokovs, their escape from Russia, Nabokov's education at Cambridge, and the murder of his father in Berlin. Boyd then turns to the years that Nabokov spent, impoverished, in Germany and France, until the coming of Hitler forced him to flee, with wife and son, to the United States. This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, prerevolutionary and migr. In the course of his ten years' work on the biography, Boyd traveled along Nabokov's trail everywhere from Yalta to Palo Alto. The only scholar to have had free access to the Nabokov archives in Montreux and the Library of Congress, he also interviewed at length Nabokov's family and scores of his friends and associates. For the general reader, Boyd offers an introduction to Nabokov the man, his works, and his world. For the specialist, he provides a basis for all future research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished. Boyd investigates Nabokov's relation to and his independence from his time, examines the special structures of his mind and thought, and explains the relations between his philosophy and his innovations of literary strategy and style. At the same time he provides succinct introductions to all the fiction, dramas, memoirs, and major verse; presents detailed analyses of the major books that break new ground for the scholar, while providing easy paths into the works for other readers; and shows the relationship between Nabokov's life and the themes and subjects of his art.

布賴恩•博伊德（Brian Boyd）新西蘭奧剋蘭大學英語係傑齣教授，國際知名學者，納博科夫研究權威，成果榮獲多種奬勵，並被譯成12種文字。他最富盛名的學術成果包括兩捲本傳記《納博科夫傳：俄羅斯時期》、《納博科夫傳：美國時期》，關於《微暗的火》、《阿達》的研究著作以及他負責的網站“阿達在綫”。此外，他還編有《美國圖書館中的納博科夫》（三捲本，1996），閤編《納博科夫的蝴蝶》（與羅伯特•邁剋爾•派爾閤作）、《詩歌與譯文》（與斯坦尼斯拉夫•什瓦布林閤作，哈考特，2008），並幫助意大利阿德爾斐七星詩社齣版社和西班牙銀河齣版社編輯納博科夫全集。他的近期著作包括《論故事的起源：進化、認識與小說》（貝爾剋納普/哈佛，2009）以及《文學的進化論研究：藝術與科學讀本》（哥倫比亞，2009）。目前正研究撰寫科學哲學傢卡爾•波普爾的傳記。

劉佳林，1965年11月生，上海交通大學人文學院中文係副教授，碩士生導師。近期主要成果有：《比較文學概論》（參編），《論文明、權力與知識》（譯著），《誠與真》（譯著），《漢娜•阿倫特：政治、曆史與公民身份》（譯著），《外國傳記鑒賞辭典》（副主編）等。目前正承擔國傢社科基金項目“納博科夫小說論”的研究工作。