Speak, Memory
An Autobiography Revisited
Nabokov on a Russian childhood that ended in exile, and on the tricks memory plays while you are writing it down.
Nabokov’s account of a Russian childhood of extraordinary privilege, ended by revolution and exile, assembled and reassembled over decades in three languages. It is as much about the mechanics of remembering, what returns while you write and what the writing invents, as about what happened.
Recommended by 1 Person
Anne Applebaum
But this is one of the central themes: the tricks that memory plays, and how, in the course of writing, things come back to you. While this is a book about a childhood in Russia, it’s also a book about how time changes what we think about things. You should certainly read it with a grain of salt.
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