This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, pre-revolutionary and emigre. In the course of his 10 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research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished.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 andhis innovations of literary strategy and style.

Superlatives required for this stupendous bio!

If you're very interested in Nabokov or a student of his work, then this biography is amazing. However, I am both of those things, and don't know if I have the time needed to complete the second 600 page book that accompanies this. It's incredibly detailed, practically day by day, but literally might not be worth it until you've read majority of Nabokov's ouevre first.

I got this book, and it's accompanying American volume, by accident from a book club I belonged to to get a free new, at the time, translation of Proust. The club had a usual deal where each month you'd get a notice of the monthly selection and the recipient would have to send in an order not to send it or it would be shipped (surely a win/win with the postal service). Either I didn't send it back or decided to let it be the purchase that satisfied the terms of getting the initial freebie. Whatever the reason I figured I'd read it one of these days and 30 years later mission accomplished.

This is a very good biography. It's not an "official biographer", whatever that means, but the family approved of him doing it and gave him access to everything at their disposal including information about an affair he carried on that was oddly at odds with how he otherwise carried on his life (and caused him feelings of guilt for quite a while, some of it carried into his fiction imo). In notes at the end of The Enchanter by son Dmitri, he makes reference to Boyd preparing a "literary biography".

As I was reading this i was concurrently reading the short stories and full length novels which I believe added a level of appreciation that would otherwise be lacking. I had previously not read his fiction originally written in Russian so this has been an eye opener. Boyd's commentary on them is outstanding even when I don't completely agree (I thought The Gift, while a major work, was unduly incomprehensibly complex; and complexity is usually a Nabokovian plus for me). I will proceed directly to the American volume.

Was für ein Buchmonster, ein Biografiemonster ist Boyd hier gelungen – dabei ist das nur der russische Teil dieser zweibändigen Nabokov Biografie. Es ist unglaublich wieviel Material, Namen, Orte, Begegnungen, Familienbegebenheiten, politische Hintergründe und noch vieles mehr Boyd hier zusammengetragen hat. Dazu noch die Analyse und Besprechung der Werke samt Entstehungsprozess welche in dieser Zeit entstanden sind – einfach unglaublich. Solch eine Bio habe ich noch nicht gelesen, großartig.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years is an incredibly packed account, a complex look at the great Russian-American author's life and beliefs, filled with stories and analyses from the first 40 years of Vladimir Nabokov's life—his childhood in Russia, his refugee life in the Crimea, his emigre life in Berlin and Paris and finally, at the very end of this first volume by Brian Boyd, aboard the last possible ship to leave Nazi-threatened Paris.

I should say upfront, as if the other reviewers haven't made this clear yet, this biography is not for the fair-weather fans of Nabokov. It provides a sometimes unimaginable amount of information on things that the general public (i.e. readers of only Lolita) never wants to know. Some of these stories that Boyd includes I already knew from reading other biographies, autobiographies, and of course Nabokov's semi-autobiograpical-but-not novels themselves; but the at-times tiring details Boyd includes leave me with that much more of an appreciation of all of Nabokov's pieces of writing, big or small. Nabokov, is, of course, one of my all-time favorite authors, and Boyd's biography was a clear indication that Nabokov seemed to feel he was predestined to become a writer of literary fiction (among other things) despite any distractions or hardships. His attention to his work tops anything I've ever focused on—ever. (Okay, perhaps an exaggeration. But it sure seems like it after reading this book.)

Thankfully, unlike other biographies of Nabokov I've read, Boyd's language here was beautiful, a fitting homage to a man who wrote some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read. despite its density and length, I was enthralled by almost all of this book, and now my reading list for all things Nabokov has grown infinitely longer.

The Russian Years covers Nabokov's birth in 1899 to his final departure from Europe in spring of 1940 as the Nazis were closing in on Paris. The entire early childhood period of Vladimir's life was astounding to me. Trying to imagine Nabokov as a child is already amusing, but Boyd made his childhood in St. Petersburg and Vyra come to life. He was such a precocious child and his obsessions and quirks shone in this volume. Throughout his life Nabokov denied that he had specific influences on his writing, but it's clear through his childhood that there were a lot of things that he carried with him emotionally that made their way into his books later.

Along that line, though, after knowing some of these stories of Nabokov's life, i wanted more personal details. Boyd included information about Nabokov's childhood that was well-rounded in different ways, including peeks into his personal life, but these died out a bit as the book reached Nabokov's adulthood. But then again, considering that his wife, Vera, (along with their son Dmitri) was still alive when this book was published and she was a very private person, I understand why there aren't more personal stories in here. But I wanted to hear more about Nabokov's personal hopes and fears especially in such a turbulent time in Europe: even though we already know, of course, how things end up, the tension did not abate while I was reading about how the Nabokovs were able to survive when things became dangerous in both Berlin and Paris. Even still, I wanted to know more from Nabokov himself. (For instance: how Vladimir viewed his brother's, Sergey's, homosexuality, and how he felt being both fairly poor and worried about the future of europe in the late 1930s. both of these topics are at least broached, but not sufficiently enough for my liking.)

I did learn, however, so much more about Vladimir's relationship to his father, a revolutionary leader who is fascinating in his own right. I already knew that relationship and the elder Nabokov's untimely, violent death shaped his son's life profoundly, but I wasn't aware just how profoundly. Vladimir was already interested in death and consciousness as concepts and themes for stories, but after 1922 he delved so much deeper into it. Seeing Boyd connect that event to so much else in his life was fascinating—although I suppose it's hard to tell how much Nabokov actually felt that way versus what Boyd is including in his own interpretations of it.

The only thing about The Russian Years that made me cringe a little bit was how much literary analysis there was of seemingly ever single story Nabokov ever published as he was honing his writing skills. Of course Nabokov's life was inseparable from his books, so a biography should include some of both, but I really only wanted to hear about his life, rather than detailed analyses of books and stories—many of which, admittedly, I haven't read yet. But even for those books I have read, Boyd's analysis seemed like it would be better suited as two separate books sometimes, when there would be whole chapters just about a particular book from Boyd's perspective, rather than the preferred insight from Vladimir or Vera Nabokov themselves, or any critics of the time in which the works were published. As a former English major—former in the sense that I got frustrated with that area of study and gave up on it—I found it a bit insufferable at times, although I certainly have to acknowledge Boyd's deep commitment to knowing all the ins and outs of Nabokov's works. For me, although I would consider myself a Nabokov superfan, it was even too much.

If you're a Nabokov superfan and have read enough of his stories and books, The Russian Years is a fantastic addition to understanding his writing. I'm looking forward to reading more about his American years, Boyd's next volume.

This and the American Years. Best biography of Nabokov, it successfully interweaves his life and his work. Boyd is clearly concerned with Nabokov the writer, and with his life in relation to his writing.

Way too gushy and overdoses on the overwrought lit crit.

NYT

Mr. Boyd, well done! My "Nabokov" shelf will happily be joined by this biography. The first quarter was a little bit of a struggle for me; V.D. Nabokov took over, and while that history is interesting in its own right, my personal interests lie less in the politics of the time (at least in that level of excruciating detail) and more on Vladimir Nabokov himself and his works (which we get in spades once we pass childhood, happily!).

It was wonderful to read the criticism for each novel, poem, play, and short story and pick up on things I never would have noticed or thought of in a certain way. I'm not sure Boyd always hit the mark, but I enjoyed all of the attempts. The Gift especially is one novel I truly struggled to get through intact, and I think a reread with these addition insights will be very rewarding.

I just acquired a lovely book of Nabokov's poetry (his poetry is the one thing I haven't read...); I have this idea I would love to read/reread everything again, but in the order it was written, this time. Wouldn't that be something?

I remember the day I picked up that disastrous, overly marked, perfectly bendable copy of Lolita (little stockinged feet on the cover) from a thrift store and that was the day (for a lack of a better way to put it): "You came into my life-not as one comes to visit (you know, “not taking one’s hat off”) but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps."

Vol 1. Great writing about a great life.

What an awesome biography, can't wait to read part 2: The American Years!