Keys to The Gift

Yuri Leving (Ph.D. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is involved in research on visual arts at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has taught at The George Washington University and is now at Dalhousie University. His main field of interest is Russian literature, culture and film. Leving is the author of Train Station – Garage – Hangar: Vladimir Nabokov and Poetics of Russian Urbanism (2004, Short-listed for Andrey Bely Prize). He also co-edited two volumes of articles, Eglantine: Collection of Philological Essays to Honor the Sixtieth Anniversary of Roman Timenchik (2005) and Empire N. Nabokov and Heirs (2006).

“Yuri Leving’s meticulous dissection of Nabokov’s last Russian novel, The Gift, fully vindicates his claim for it as ‘one of the masterpieces of twentieth century modernist literature,’ fit to stand beside Joyce's Ulysses for the allusive richness of its content and the musicality of its prose. In seven richly fact-filled chapters Leving has unearthed a wealth of historical, chronological, biographical, textological, literary critical and bibliographical material to bolster his case, and like a scrupulous archeologist, uncovers the multiple layers of Nabokov's complex creation to illustrate and illuminate its artistic essence. In it?s masterly marshaling of evidence, Leving’s work is unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon.”