Two notes to Independent's very incomplete note:
(a) it manages not to mention that Azbuka-Klassika published English text as well as a Russian TRANSLATION of TOoL by Gennady Barabtarlo.
Those who read Russian can look up today's news on Radio Svoboda :
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1891053.htmlIt quotes Dr. Barabtarlo's note that (in my crude reverse translation from Russian :) TOoL "resembles more the torso of Apollo of Miletus whose head is unknown to us than the Venus de Milo whose handlessness is not a handicap but might be even a benefit for the whole"
(b) >>>where the writer was born in 1899 before fleeing Russia with his family in 1917.
1919, not 1917.
Nabokovs fled St Petersburg in 1917 to Crimea -- where they stayed until April 15 (April 2 Old style), 1919.
While the wonderful peninsula changed hands many times since, and is still a contentious piece of real estate, there is no doubt that in 1917-1919 it was Russia, or more precisely one of the successor states of the short-lived Russian Republic of 1917; indeed V. D. Nabokov was a Minister of Justice in its government.
Only leaving Crimea meant leaving Russia then for hundreds of thousands of former Russian citizens.
Victor Fet
________________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU]