People

By Sara C. Medina

"An outstanding phenomenon," master of "sparkling language (and) unexpected metaphors," a real Russian "yearning for his homeland." Could this be the same Vladimir Nabokov, the great Russian-born novelist, whom Soviet authorities had long dismissed for "literary snobbism"? It could indeed, when a Soviet publication, 64 Chess Review, is prompted by today's new, more permissive cultural climate to print an excerpt from Nabokov's 1954 memoir Other Shores with a glowing introduction by Poet Fazil Iskander. So what if Nabokov is nine years dead, his greatest works, including the sensational Lolita, published decades ago? So what that the 2,000-word excerpt only chronicles the author's labors on a chess problem as an allegory for his family's difficulties in World War II Paris? "After all," gloats Iskander, "he is ours."