Nabokov on the Heights

Since 1997, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer has been offering seminars on Vladimir Nabokov, the great Russian American immigrant writer, at Boston College. This volume features essays by undergraduate and graduate students, which originated in the Nabokov seminar, as well as scholarship by Boston College faculty who work on Nabokov. The essays cover a broad thematic and intellectual terrain and showcase cutting-edge Nabokov scholarship and criticism. The topics include but are not limited to: translingualism, sexuality, Cold War politics, food studies, Nabokov and the visual arts, religion and metaphysics, urban studies, immigration studies, and modernist poetics. The collection will be of great interest to students and scholars, as well as to the broad audience of Nabokovians.

“This compelling collection offers fresh insights into Vladimir Nabokov’s life and artistic legacy.The editor’s essay draws on fascinating new archival information to illuminate Nabokov’s ties to Boston and environs, while the other wide-ranging essays showcase his brilliance as a literary innovator and cultural icon. Essential reading for scholars and admirers of Nabokov alike.”

— Vladimir E. Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus, Yale University, and author of To Break Russia’s Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

“Nabokov on the Heights is a tribute both to Nabokov’s ability to engage a new generation of readers and to Maxim D. Shrayer’s skill in guiding them as they seek to convert their enthusiasm into meaningful scholarship. This volume celebrates Nabokov in Boston, encompassing his life in that city and readings of his work produced by former students and current colleagues of Shrayer at Boston College. The readings, thankfully, do not produce a unified interpretation of the writer, but they bear witness to a shared sense of scholarly community. There are already several books on teaching Nabokov, but this book is different, since it reflects and extends what has already happened in the classroom. A successful class is only the start of a continuing relationship with its teacher and its texts. By retrograde analysis, one can read Nabokov on the Heights to discover what can happen when one teaches Nabokov well.”

— Eric Naiman, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Nabokov, Perversely.

“In celebration of the role that the colleges and universities of Massachusetts played in the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov, the scholars of Boston College have located and filled in gaps in Nabokov studies, stimulating further thought and discussion.”

— Leona Toker, Professor Emerita, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the author of Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures

Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual author and Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College, where he has been teaching since 1996 and co-founded the Jewish studies program. Shrayer is the author and editor of over thirty books of nonfiction, biography, fiction, poetry, and translations, most recently the memoir Immigrant Baggage and the collection of poetry Conductor from Zion Square. Shrayer has published four books about Vladimir Nabokov and regularly teaches Nabokov seminars at Boston College. His works have been translated into thirteen languages. For more information,

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