The Gift is Vladimir Nabokov's final Russian novel, and is considered to be his farewell to the world he was leaving behind. Nabokov wrote it between 1935 and 1937 while living in Berlin, and it was published in serial form under his pen name, Vladimir Sirin.
First publication in Sovremennye zapiski with the fourth chapter cut out
First complete edition (1952)
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was an expatriate Russian and Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
Nabokov in Montreux, Switzerland, 1973
Nabokov's grandfather Dmitry Nabokov, who was Justice Minister under Tsar Alexander II
Nabokov's father, V. D. Nabokov, in his World War I officer's uniform, 1914
The Nabokov family mansion in Saint Petersburg; today it is the site of the Nabokov museum.