Office Hours: Vladimir Nabokov in Exile With Professor Luke Parker

Host Priscilla Lee ’25 and Visiting Assistant Professor Luke Parker discuss the life of Russian author Vladimir Nabokov, best known for his 1955 novel “Lolita.”

Office Hours: Vladimir Nabokov in Exile With Professor Luke Parker

In part one of the conversation, Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian Luke Parker traces Nabokov’s “westernized” childhood and exile in Berlin to reveal the multilingual and transnational dimensions of Nabokov’s career. Neither neglecting nor limiting himself to the Russian language and readership, Nabokov’s work sheds light on important questions about emigrant (vs. immigrant) identity, how Russia fits in the West, and the cross-cultural possibilities in translation, adaptation, and multilingual literature.