“The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.”

Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. He wrote under his own name and also used the pen name Vladimir Sirin. He is known for fiction that moves between Russian and English, along with poetry and translation. His interests also reached into entomology, which sat alongside his literary work and shaped the range of his public life.