Before she could publish The Enchanter, her book about novelist Vladimir Nabokov, Lila Azam Zanganeh needed the permission of the author’s son, Dmitri, who died last week at the age of 77. Here she tells the story of her nights spent reading to him in Palm Beach—and learning about his family, and remembering her own.
For three days and three nights, on a damp February weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, I read Nabokov to Nabokov. I had traveled from New York to Palm Beach with a manuscript in my suitcase to visit Dmitri Nabokov, the only son and literary executor of Vladimir Nabokov.
The manuscript, my...
