Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov
A Novel
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Publisher Description
In his novel based on the extraordinary life of the brother of Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Russell re-creates the rich and changing world in which Sergey, his family and friends lived; from wealth and position in pre-revolutionary Russia to the halls of Cambridge University and the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. But it is the honesty and vulnerability of Sergey, our young gay narrator, that hook the reader: his stuttering childhood in the shadow of his brilliant brother, his opium-fueled evenings with Cocteau, his troubled love life on the margins of the Ballets Russes and its legendary cast, and his isolation in war-torn Berlin.
A meticulously researched novel, featuring an extraordinary cast of characters (including Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Magnus Hirschfield, and of course the master himself, Vladimir Nabokov), this is ultimately the story of a beautiful and vulnerable boy growing into an enlightened and courageous man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this meticulously researched novel, Russell (The Coming Storm) imagines the life of the younger, and now forgotten, Nabokov Sergey. Always living in the shadow of his older brother, Sergey finds himself in 1943 Berlin working for the Propaganda Ministry. When he realizes that he may be under surveillance, he begins hastily penning his life story. From his birth in pre-revolutionary Russia, Sergey (cursed with a stutter) claims that his parents viewed him as Vladimir s pale comparison. As Sergey tells of his early life in St. Petersburg, the narrative shifts to depicting a homosexual man living in uncertain times, with touches of glamour as Sergey meets Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau, among others. Sergey s struggles with his sexuality, as well as his adventures and misadventures in the salons and clubs of pre-war Europe, are drawn with humanity. With compelling characters and steady prose, the reader will breeze through this pleasurable, heart-breaking account of the other Nabokov.
