He plans to intercept Mary when she arrives at the station. He detaches himself from his current mistress Lyudmila, and ignores the attentions of Klara, his busty neighbour in the Berlin pension. When Ganin sees Mary’s photograph as the wife of the vulgarian Alfyorov, it re-awakens these memories and fuels him with the desire to recapture his first true love. The relationship then dwindles as they are forced apart – yet Ganin keeps the memory of it alive as a significant event in his life. There is a brief attempt at consummating their romance – but it fails. In the autumn Ganin and Mary both return to St Petersburg and find their opportunities for privacy are severely curtailed. The whole of this experience is summoned from memory whilst he is in exile. His later memories of youthful rapture and erotic exploration are mingled with his sense of freedom and appreciation of the natural world of which he feels himself a part.

In the idyllic summer days that follow they meet in the countryside. He sees a pretty girl at an outdoor musical event and falls in love with her. Ganin is a sensitive teenage boy living on a country estate in Russia at the time of the First World War.

It is also full of what were to become the hallmarks of Nabokov’s mature literary style – verbal playfulness, ironic twists of story line, the juxtaposition of tenderness with the grotesque, and beautiful evocations of the textures of everyday life.Īt its most obvious and superficial level, this is a story about a youthful love affair.

It is the tale of a first young love, an account of political exile, and the evocation of a dawning poetic imagination. The novel was completely ignored at the time of its first publication – and yet it is a marvellous debut, full of subtle touches and an admirable restraint in telling three stories simultaneously. Sirin, which he used to distinguish himself from his father – a writer and politician who was also called Vladimir Nabokov. It was written in Berlin and appeared as Mashenka under his pen name of V. Mary (1926) is Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel. Tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Mary nabokov novel