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Christmas
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About the author
Vladimir Nabokov
894 books15k followersVladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up trilingual, speaking Russian, English, and French in a household that nurtured his intellectual curiosities, including a lifelong passion for butterflies. This seemingly idyllic, privileged existence was abruptly shattered by the Bolshevik Revolution, which forced the family into permanent exile in 1919. This early, profound experience of displacement and the loss of a homeland became a central, enduring theme in his subsequent work, fueling his exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irretrievable past.
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 6, 2014
Nabokov's beautiful Christmas story of loss and redemption. Read by Robert Glenister. 17:40 Radio 4 Christmas Day
Christmas Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
short stories
christmas misery beautifully written, and with a sliver of hope
winter 2012 2013
Attacus mothAn intensely moving short story about a father mourning the death of his son. On Christmas Eve, a grieving father moves around the family
home gathering together some of his son's effects. This leads him to discover things that he did not know about his beloved son and also to
find something among his belongings that will renew his will to live.
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899, the eldest son of an aristocratic family. Nabokov is arguably most famous for his 1955 novel LOLITA.
Read by Robert Glenister.
Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane.
2* A Country Christmas
3* A Killer's Christmas in Wales
5* A Child's Christmas in Wales (re-visit for nth time)
4* Christmas stories of Vladimir Nabokov
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 28, 2012
From BBC Radio 4:
An intensely moving short story about a father mourning the death of his son. On Christmas Eve, a grieving father moves around the family home gathering together some of his son's effects. This leads him to discover things that he did not know about his beloved son and also to find something among his belongings that will renew his will to live.
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899, the eldest son of an aristocratic family. Nabokov is arguably most famous for his 1955 novel LOLITA.
Read by Robert Glenister.
Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane.
An intensely moving short story about a father mourning the death of his son. On Christmas Eve, a grieving father moves around the family home gathering together some of his son's effects. This leads him to discover things that he did not know about his beloved son and also to find something among his belongings that will renew his will to live.
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899, the eldest son of an aristocratic family. Nabokov is arguably most famous for his 1955 novel LOLITA.
Read by Robert Glenister.
Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane.
December 31, 2012
Wonderful - thank you Bettie...
December 22, 2025
A weighty short story about a father in deep grief over his child’s loss at Christmas, written with the most beautiful descriptions of the spaces he moves through. It ends on a hopeful note about chance and life.
November 16, 2022
gorgeous, colorful winter imagery and very sad :(
November 14, 2014
Never before have I read such an accurate description of a father's grief for the loss of his son. Nabokov captures perfectly the silent volcanism of this man's thoughts and feelings. The author's poetic imagery is achingly beautiful. I felt, as I read, as if Nabokov were leading me pleasantly on a country path, and as we walked along, he quietly slipped a stiletto between my ribs. I love him for it, for with this simple story, he reached a place within me like no other writer before.
January 3, 2022
“Gradually the wrinkled tissues, the velvety fringes unfurled; the fan-pleated veins grew firmer as they filled with air. It became a winged thing imperceptibly, as a maturing face imperceptibly becomes beautiful. And its wings—still feeble, still moist—kept growing and unfolding, and now they were developed to the limit set for them by God, and there, on the wall, instead of a little lump of life, instead of a dark mouse, was a great Attacus moth like those that fly, birdlike, around lamps in the Indian dusk.
And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness.“
And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness.“
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November 23, 2021Christmas with butterflies and moths
After walking back from the village to his manor across the dimming snows, Sleptsov sat down in a corner, on a plush-covered chair he did not remember ever using before. It was the kind of thing that happens after some great calamity. Not your brother but a chance acquaintance, a vague country neighbor to whom you never paid much attention, with whom in normal times you exchange scarcely a word, is the one who comforts you wisely and gently, and hands you your dropped hat after the funeral service is over and you are reeling from grief, your teeth chattering, your eyes blinded by tears. The same can be said of inanimate objects. Any room, even the coziest and the most absurdly small, in the little-used wing of a great country house has an unlived-in corner. And it was such a corner in which Sleptsov sat.
After walking back from the village to his manor across the dimming snows, Sleptsov sat down in a corner, on a plush-covered chair he did not remember ever using before. It was the kind of thing that happens after some great calamity. Not your brother but a chance acquaintance, a vague country neighbor to whom you never paid much attention, with whom in normal times you exchange scarcely a word, is the one who comforts you wisely and gently, and hands you your dropped hat after the funeral service is over and you are reeling from grief, your teeth chattering, your eyes blinded by tears. The same can be said of inanimate objects. Any room, even the coziest and the most absurdly small, in the little-used wing of a great country house has an unlived-in corner. And it was such a corner in which Sleptsov sat.
April 16, 2025
I've read this as my school program when I was a child, and it touched me really personally. that was a huge impact on me, even huger than Turgenev's mumu (which is famous for breaking children's hearts at school). the theme is somehow very important for me and this kind of novels make me think so deeply.
September 28, 2017
It was heavy like most Russian short stories I've read. It was definitely touching, though.
December 25, 2020
Beautiful descriptions of setting in this moving, but hardly merry, Christmas story.
December 24, 2022
This was an interesting, but sad story at the beginning with a beautiful ending that you’re not expecting.
June 29, 2025
Una short story que transmite mucho en tan pocas palabras, me gusta el detalle con el que se desarrolla la historia y obviamente me gusta mucho este tipo de género
December 27, 2019
Don’t read Christmas expecting to feel joyous. Nobokov understands the tortured soul and he once again in this short story, describes for the reader a father’s agony at the loss of his son at Christmas.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews