February 2009 Fiction Book Club Selection

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Product Description

The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career.  It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative:  the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--a book very much like The Gift itself.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #312211 in Books
• Published on: 1991-05-07
• Released on: 1991-05-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com Review
For most of his life, Vladimir Nabokov was quite literally a man without a country. It's a small irony, then, that his career falls so neatly into national phases: Russian, German, French, and American, plus the protracted coda he spend in a Swiss luxury hotel during his final decade. The Gift, which he wrote between 1935 and 1937 in Berlin, is the grand summation of his second phase. It describes, for starters, the sentimental education of a young Russian writer, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev. This hyphenated creation has more than a few things in common with the author, despite Nabokov's vehement denial in the novel's foreword. Still, only a nitwit would read The Gift for its autobiographical revelations. What this early masterpiece does offer is a wealth of lyrical, witty, heartbreaking prose, beautifully translated from the Russian by Michael Scammell (with an assist from Nabokov himself). Who else would note the way a street rises "at a barely perceptible angle, beginning with a post office and ending with a church, like an epistolary novel"? Who else has ever administered the satirical shiv to his characters with such deadly, almost affectionate aplomb?

Shirin himself was a thickset man with a reddish crew cut, always badly shaved and wearing large spectacles behind which, as in two aquariums, swam two tiny, transparent eyes--which were completely impervious to visual impressions. He was blind like Milton, deaf like Beethoven, and a blockhead to boot.

Of course, only a fraction of The Gift is taken up with this sort of demolition derby. Fyodor's romance with Zina, for example, occasions the most ardent prose of Nabokov's career: "And not only was Zina cleverly and elegantly made to measure for him by a very painstaking fate, but both of them, forming a single shadow, were made to the measure of something not quite comprehensible, but wonderful and benevolent and continuously surrounding them." (Shades of Volodya and Véra? Only the deceased husband and wife, and perhaps Stacy Schiff, know for sure.)

At the same time, The Gift is a brilliant, mesmerizing riff on the history of Russian literature, with elaborate bouquets tossed to Pushkin and Gogol. There's also a hilarious yet somehow tender evisceration of the do-gooding polemicist Nikolai Chernyshevski--which was suppressed, in fact, when the novel was originally serialized by a Russian émigré magazine. As should be clear by now, The Gift defies any attempt at quick-and-dirty summary. But the book plays the most pleasurable kind of havoc with our stuffy notions of narrative structure and linguistic protocol. And as Nabokov repeatedly wraps the reader's consciousness around his little finger, he never holds back on that ultimate literary gift: pleasure. --James Marcus

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

From the Inside Flap
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career.  It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative:  the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--a book very much like The Gift itself.

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Customer Reviews

Coming of Age in Exile
I found this "coming of age in exile" novel of VN's to be an exhilirating, long read. The sensibilities developed in this final Russian novel of VN's are multi-layered and alternately opaque and transparent. Oftentimes this book appears to be going nowhere and then a passage appears that transports you into another of Nabokov's magical perspectives where human imagination informs the universe! I've enjoyed the pace of the text and found it to be a book worth savoring over an extended reading. Criticisms about the books apparent "plotlessness" are not based in any Nabokovian context. Careful reading, sirs and ladies, is the way to proceed. The reading is the thing! Take the gift as just that.

Hail Colorfully Winged Muse!
Nabokov is very funny(in case you didn't already know that) and no matter what his subject matter the humor comes through. That is one of the gifts here, the other more obvious one is literature, specifically Russian literature, the tradition of which is a gift the Russian born Nabokov received and in this book he gives you his version of that tradition in brief and since this book would be the last book he wrote in Russian one assumes he is paying a quite deliberate homage to his homelands men of letters. But Nabokov is never serious for long and the laughs are always right around the corner or on the next page. This book is also about lead character Fyodor's gift which is his talent and that talent appears in wonderful ways all through the narrative. This was written in Nabokov's middle period while he lived in Berlin,Germany writing in a small hotel room with family and those circumstances just makes this all the more incredible because it is a very beautiful book. Perhaps Nabokov was wondering what he would do with his gift at this most uncertain pre-WWII moment in his life. His great books were still to come but this book is his first to show that he is no ordinary artist and it at least equals if not surpasses the later books in regards to appeal because it is so personal, or at least as personal as Nabokov gets. You know you are in the hands of a master when you suddenly realize the chapter you are reading is a dream even though it is written in a way that does not immediately give that away and so you share the dreamers belief that the dreamed moment is real(what is a Russian novel without a dream). But again Nabokovs humor comes into play as the clue that this is in fact a dream is only subtley inserted into the chapter. After early disruptions and tragedy(his father was assasinated by Russian police)Nabokov led a charmed life, perhaps willed it to be so, and this book is marked with that charm and his word magicians wit which were to be his life sustaining strengths and his father from whom he received the precious gift seems to benevolently haunt the margins of these farewell to Russia pages. And butterfly hunting is one of the more beautiful ways to describe the artists pursuit.

VN's best Russian-language novel
This is an intense, nostalgic, non-linear novel. It's a rich treat for Nabokov fans. The first time I read it, I recall getting frustrated at the seeming plotlessness, yet there were certain scenes and passsages that I could never forget. I picked it up again a couple of years later, and absolutely fell in love with it. The Gift is, in some ways, Nabokov's take on Joyce-- a roaming perspective, an intellectual humor, an overall sense of character development. The end of the novel is ecstatic with the potential of life.