The Gift may be seen as a more mature and enlarged version of Nabokov's first novel Mary (1926), with an added jumbling of narrative styles and generic forms. It is permeated with a strong “literary” component, largely (though not exclusively) relating to Russian literature – both nineteenth-century “classical” and émigré. According to Nabokov's English-version foreword, indeed, his novel's heroine “is not Zina, but Russian Literature” (9). Published serially (as Dar) in a Russian émigré journal in 1937-8, the work appeared shorn of its fourth chapter, the “biography” of the nineteenth-century radical, Nikolay Chernyshevski (retaining Nabokov's

This article in full comprises 2592 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

Published 30 June 2002

Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Dar [The Gift (English Edition 1963) ]". The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 June 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5747, accessed 9 February 2010.]