Thankfully, Demetri Nabokov didn’t listen to his father. Before he died, novelist Vladimir Nabokov instructed Demetri to burn both Lolita and his unfinished manuscript, The Original of Laura. But Demetri wisely abstained, putting Laura—which Nabokov pere wrote on 138 index cards—in a vault in Switzerland instead. Over 30 years later, Demetri has decided to publish the work, which is due out from Knopf in November. “It was quite emotional for Dimitri because it was a big decision to publish, which took him decades,” his publisher said. The world’s book critics wait with bated breath.
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