A cap­ti­vat­ing, nuanced por­trait of the life of Véra Nabokov, who ded­i­cat­ed her­self to advanc­ing her husband’s writ­ing career, play­ing a vital role in the cre­ation of his great­est works.

Véra Nabokov (1902 – 1991) was in many ways the epit­o­me of the wife of a great man: keen­ly aware of her husband’s extra­or­di­nary tal­ent, she decid­ed to make his suc­cess her ulti­mate goal, through­out fifty-two years of mar­riage until his death in 1977. The first read­er of his texts, Véra worked as typ­ist and edi­tor. She orga­nized their lives in exile, as they trav­eled to Berlin, Paris, Switzer­land, and, most impor­tant­ly, the US, where she con­vinced Vladimir to focus on writ­ing nov­els in Eng­lish. She not only con­trolled the family’s finances and con­tract nego­ti­a­tions, but also attempt­ed to con­trol his friend­ships — par­tic­u­lar­ly with women — going so far as to audit his class­es.

In a rich, sweep­ing nov­el, Moni­ka Zgus­to­va immers­es us in the dai­ly life of this remark­able cou­ple, offer­ing insights into their com­plex per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships. Véra con­sid­ered her­self an inde­pen­dent woman, but was she real­ly, when her hus­band took up so much space? And with­out Véra, could Nabokov have become one of the twen­ti­eth century’s great­est writers?