Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Auckland, has written much on Vladimir Nabokov’s life and works, edited and translated much of his work, and written on other literature from Homer to Spiegelman. His most recent books include On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (2009), Stalking Nabokov (2011), Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos by John Shade (2011), and Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2012).

Pale Fire

A collection of Vladimir Nabokov's Selected Poems is being published this month. Brian Boyd, the author of the new book Why Lyrics Last, is best known as the world’s foremost expert on the great writer—his definitive two-volume biography was published in 1993. He remembers the novelist’s son, Dmitri, who died at the age of 77 in February, who was a bon vivant, car lover, and literary executor of his father’s legacy. Plus, Lila Azam Zanganeh on the nights she spent reading to Dmitri.