The Original of Laura

When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn

the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and

unfinished novel, _The Original of Laura_. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not

bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the

manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the Russian

novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books—has

wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s

wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the

greatest writers of the twentieth century. His decision finally to allow

publication of the fragmented narrative—dark yet playful, preoccupied with

mortality—affords us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity,

the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.

_Photos of the handwritten index cards accompany the text. They are perforated

and can be removed and rearranged, as the author likely did when he was

writing the novel._

_From the Hardcover edition._