The Fall 2019 issue of The Nabokovian, edited by Professor Priscilla Meyer, is now posted. The issue showcases contributions by Gavriel Shapiro, Shakeeb Arzoo, and Stephen Blackwell. Please note that access to The Nabokovian is contingent upon being a paying member of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society. IVNS can be joined here.  Recent issues of Notes and Brief commentaries can be found here.

Maurice Couturier, president of honour of the Société Française Vladimir Nabokov, has written a letter to Le Monde on the subject of Nabokov's absence from its list of 100 novels that have excited its critics since 1944. The letter is pasted below:

Un surprenant absent parmi les « 100 meilleurs romans du Monde »

Maurice Couturier

Traducteur et spécialiste de Nabokov, éditeur de ses romans dans la

Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, je m’étonne de ne pas trouver Lolita ou Ada

dans votre classement des 100 romans qui ont « le plus enthousiasmé »

vos critiques depuis 1944, ni même le nom de cet auteur dans la liste

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society wishes to congratulate the winners of the following prizes:

Call for Papers for The Nabokovian

It is my pleasure to announce that Drs. Gerard de Vries and Stanislav Shvabrin have been appointed by the Board of IVNS to serve in the capacity of Associate Editors of The Nabokovian. 

This appointment will enable the site to grow and expand. 

In my capacity of General Editor, I wish to thank Drs. de Vries and Shvabrin for their generous willingness to serve as Associate Editors.

With best wishes to all,

Dana

A "beta" English version of Olga Skonechnaia's voluminous commentary to Invitation to a Beheading is now available (click here to see).  

Dear Adaphiles,

The notes to Ada 1.43 have been added to the Annotations section of the website, which also means the notes to Ada 1.41 are now available (with hyperlinks to motifs and illustrations) on AdaOnline. Thanks once again to Steve Blackwell for acting as editor of the new annotations, kindly continuing the momentum of his role as the last editor of the print Nabokovian.

Dear Readers of The Nabokovian:

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society, the Société française Vladimir Nabokov and the Nabokov Society of Japan make a joint appeal to Russia's Ministry of Culture in three open letters. 

These urgent letters, published at the bottom of this message, were published in an article by Maria Bashmakova in Kommersant. The Ministry's reply to the last letter sent to it by the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation is embedded in this same article. 

On behalf of the organizers of the annual "Nabokov Readings 2019 International Conference /

Набоковские чтения – 2019 Международнaя конференция,"

it is my great pleasure to announce the conference program. The conference takes place from

3-5 July / 3-5 июля 2019.

The Société Française Vladimir Nabokov has hosted yet another magnificent conference, this time at Université Cergy-Pontoise, the Sorbonne, and Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. Plenary speakers, Isabelle Poulin and Will Norman, delivered fascinating talks on the first two days of the conference and were accompanied by speakers from several generations of Nabokovians. At the Musée National, we listened to a seminal talk on Russian immigration, which disclosed unpublished documents from the Nina Berberova Archives (including letters and notes from Nabokov).

The Societé française de Vladimir Nabokov is pleased to announce its Fourth International Symposium, "Vladimir Nabokov: Histoire et géographie." The Symposium takes place from June 6-8, 2019, at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise, Sorbonne Université, and National Museum of Immigration (Porte Dorée Palace).

Dear Friends of Nabokov:

On behalf of Nabokovians worldwide, happy birthday dear Vladimir Nabokov! 

With Zoran Kuzmanovich's permission, I post these birthday greetings for everyone to enjoy, including perhaps Nabokov himself (wherever he might be perched himself):

Happy Birthday to the man whose work makes us attend to  the stained glass windows of life while we wait for the right word not only to perch itself on our keyboards but to do so without  echoing one of his too obviously.  This grateful well-wisher already knows that he did not wait long enough. 

Zoran Kuzmanovich

Saluting the good reader,

Dana

Dear Nabokovians:

The spring issue of The Nabokovian is now posted! A big thank you to Priscilla Meyer, editor of The Nabokovian, and this issue's four contributors: Gerard de Vries, Mary Ross, Frances Peltz Assa and J.B. Geen.

Happy reading,

Dana

JJ Heckenhauer is a rare bookseller with a tradition for Russian books for more than 50 years. The bookseller has recently acquired a collection with more than 100 titles about Nabokov. The list is attached. If anyone is interested in this collection or thinks their institution might be interested in purchasing it, please contact Roger Sonnewald at ant@heckenhauer.de

The finding aid for the Nabokov family papers and other materials (in Dmitri Nabokov's possession when he died, and donated to Harvard, his alma mater, by the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation) is now complete. The material is open for researchers. There is also an online finding aid.

Brian Boyd

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society is soliciting abstracts for two Nabokov panels at the 2020 MLA Convention in Seattle:

CFP - The International Vladimir Nabokov Society MLA 2020, Seattle: Nabokov and Contemporary Writing

Dear Nabokovians:

Thank you to the 56 of you who have renewed your IVNS memberships for 2019.            

Professor Barabtarlo.

On the first day of class, one of several with Professor Barabtarlo, he announced that we must read each book twice: The Defense, Master and Margarita, Doctor Zhivago, The First Circle. Once in order to get the gist of the matter, a second time to truly appreciate the artistry. If this would not be feasible for any of us, then it would be perfectly all right to not continue further in the course. One student seated in the back row politely excused himself. And we proceeded.