I have to confess that I’m still reading a lot about Russia. At a time when Putin’s Russia is once again claiming a special status and scorning the West and its concept of democracy, Nina Khrushcheva has written an extended meditation on one of that country’s great writers: Vladimir Nabokov. In Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev argues that today’s Russians could learn from Nabokov, whose writings show how to live “in a world with open borders, among different people, different countries, and different countries.” In other words, Nabokov was a truly modern man, someone who offers a much-needed antidote to the increasingly narrow outlook Russia’s current rulers.