Speak, Memory

Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. The book is dedicated to his wife, Véra, and covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg and at their country estate Vyra, near Siverskaya. The three remaining chapters recall his years at Cambridge and as part of the Russian émigré community in Berlin and Paris. Nabokov published "Mademoiselle O", which became Chapter Five of the book, in French in 1936, and in English in the Atlantic Monthly in 1943, not indicating that it was not fiction. Subsequent pieces of the autobiography were published as...