Nabokov studies has witnessed a belated historicist turn in the last decade, with the publication of groundbreaking monographs on liberalism, political ideology, and the literary marketplace.Footnote ¹Nabokov in Context is in many ways a welcome continuation of this trend, opening up the study of the author into hitherto proscribed territories. David M. Bethea and Siggy Frank sensibly open their introduction by acknowledging “the proverbial elephant in the room” (3) – Nabokov's own strident pronouncements forbidding his novels from being read in more or less any context. These and other similar pronouncements outlawing theoretical approaches generally, and psychoanalytic approaches especially, have caused no small amount of trouble in a field that has often seemed out of step with wider developments in the academy, and distorted by its unwillingness to transgress Nabokov's stated views (manifest particularly in the frosty reception given to those brave few who have). In this critical context, the need for a wide-ranging collection that examines Nabokov's life from a diverse range of perspectives could hardly be greater; Nabokov in Context is, on the whole, a satisfying response to that need. The volume maintains an effective balance between essays dealing with topics that have long been recognized as essential to understanding Nabokov's writing and those covering less well-trodden, or in some cases entirely new, terrain.

In keeping with the ethos of Cambridge University Press's Literature in Context series, many of the essays are the result of scholars condensing a monograph's worth of research into little more than a dozen pages. Among these, Duncan White's witty and informative contribution on the publishing industry is an example of “the new Nabokov studies” at its best. Another is Will Norman's impeccably researched essay on the Cold War, which traces how Nabokov's ideological commitments fell in and out of step with his reading public over the course of his writing career. But perhaps the outstanding piece in the collection is Marijeta Bozovic's essay on “Nabokov's Visual Imagination,” which marks a refreshing departure from the usual preoccupations and idioms of Nabokov scholarship, and energetically applies itself to considering the author in relation to transmedial modernism generally, and a range of other writers and artists specifically, in what amounts to a conspicuous refusal to reconstruct the authorial persona of a singular, isolated genius, unaffected by contemporary cultural developments. These three essays are also notable for dealing directly with the contexts in which Nabokov wrote, rather than concerning themselves largely with what Nabokov thought about his context (as a few of the other essays have an unfortunate tendency to do). The more intriguing pieces include Michael Oklot and Mathew Walker on detective fiction, and Leonid Livak's daring and provocative essay on “Jewishness as Literary Device,” which questions the critical claim that Nabokov's novels are populated by a “series of remarkable Jewish characters” (229), and in its place offers a more nuanced account of the changing role of Jews and Jewishness across both the Russian and English oeuvres.

One of the ambitions for the volume that is less successfully delivered upon is the attempt to develop new methods for reading Nabokov. The major reference point of Bethea and Frank's introduction is Rita Felski's influential response to Bruno Latour's much-discussed actor-network theory, and its potential for enabling literary critics to reconceive texts as “non-human actors” (2). Despite persuasively making the case for moving beyond the limited practice of reading Nabokov as Nabokov would want to be read, however, very few of the essays take advantage of this liberty, and little of the methodological diversity present in modern and contemporary fiction studies today is in evidence here. Given the wider conversations currently taking place in the academy, it is surprising too not to see greater engagement with, say, affect theory, archival approaches, or intermedial study. Nevertheless, there is at least a determined effort to consider Nabokov's writing in various interdisciplinary contexts, most obviously in the essays on science, Darwinism, and faith. Equally welcome is the attention paid to texts spanning the entirety of the oeuvre, from the early poems onwards, rather than just focussing on the major novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Setting aside my minor complaint about its rather conservative methods, this multifaceted volume presents a comprehensive overview of the major contexts that shaped the life and writing of an artist whose works continue to elude stable critical representation – in the most extraordinarily productive ways. Nabokov in Context will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars new to the author's works, and an essential reference work for Nabokov specialists.