A landmark publication of the literary master's unfinished final work is a fragmented draft as hand-written on 138 index cards that were originally requested for destruction and have been released by his son, in a volume that features removable facsimile reproductions.

Vladimir Nabokov est né en 1899 à Saint-Pétersbourg, dans une famille aristocratique et libérale. Exilé en 1919, il vécut d'abord à Cambridge, où il acheva ses études, puis en Allemagne et en France, qu'il quitta en 1940 pour s'installer aux États-Unis. Il y enseigna pendant près de vingt ans, à Wellesley College (1941-1948) et à Cornell University (1948-1958). Après l'énorme succès de Lolita, il se retira à Montreux, en Suisse, où il mourut en 1977.

Introduction by Dmitri Nabokov

As a tepid spring settled on lakeside Switzerland in 1977, I was called from abroad to my father's bedside in a Lausanne clinic. During recovery from what is considered a banal operation, he had apparently been infected with a hospital bacillus that severely lessened his résistance. Such obvious signals of deterioration as dramatically reduced sodium and potassium levels had been totally ignored. It was high time to intervene if he was to be kept alive.
Transfer to the Vaud Cantonal University Hospital was immediately arranged, and a long and harrowing search for the noisome germ began.
My father had fallen on a hillside in Davos while pursuing his beloved pastime of entomology, and had gotten stuck in an awkward position on the steep slope as cabin-carloads of tourists responded with guffaws, misinterpreting as a holiday prank the cries for help and waves of a butterfly net. Officialdom can be ruthless ; he was subsequently reprimanded by the hotel staff for stumbling back into the lobby, supported by two bellhops, with his shorts in disarray.
There may have been no connection, but this incident in 1975 seemed to set off a period of illness, which never quite receded until those dreadful days in Lausanne. There were several tentative forays to his former life at the hotel Palace in Montreux, the majestic recollection of which floats forth as I read, in some asinine electronic biography, that the success of Lolita "did not go to Nabokov's head, and he continued to live in a shabby Swiss hotel. " (Italics mine.)