was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.