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Vladimir Nabokov

Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor (1899–1977)

  • Fame76.8
  • Momentum0.0
  • Writers rank#157
Source-basedFalling
  • Fame76.8
  • Momentum0.0
  • Writers rank#157
  • Wikipedia100.3K
Lived 1899–1977, aged 78
RUUSWritersWriter / Author
  • Wikipedia
    118 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1899–1977
    Aged 78
  • Known for
    Lolita
    1997
Summary
Updated 2026-06-21

The man who made a monster of desire into high art. Nabokov's Lolita remains one of the most controversial and formally dazzling novels in English — a book that forced readers to reckon with prose so precise it could make the unspeakable nearly beautiful, and sparked decades of argument over where literature ends and morality begins.

Biography

About

Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian while living in Berlin through the 1920s and '30s, where he met his wife Véra. After moving to the United States he switched to English and became a citizen in 1945, spending over a decade teaching Russian literature at Cornell. His 1955 novel Lolita brought international fame and ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the century's best novels; Pale Fire followed in 1962 at 53rd on the same list. Trilingual, a seven-time National Book Award finalist, an expert lepidopterist, and a chess-problem composer, he lef…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov
said
Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.
— Interview with Herbert Gold, The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, 4th series (1977), p. 107
Vladimir Nabokov
said
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
— Look at the Harlequins! (1974).
Vladimir Nabokov
said
I hastened to quench a thirst that had been burning a hole in the mixed metaphor of my life ever since I had fondled a quite different Dolly thirteen years earlier.
— Look at the Harlequins! (1974).
Vladimir Nabokov
said
What is translation? On a platter A poet's pale and glaring head, A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter, And profanation of the dead.
— "On Translating 'Eugene Onegin'", lines 1–4. Poems (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959) p. 37
Vladimir Nabokov
said
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
— Problems of translation (1955).
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
76.8
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical27.6
Now attention10.0
Source confidence70.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
—
Country rank
—
Category rank
#157
Receipts

Sources