The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov: A Novel

If you're going to write a biography of someone or a bit of historical fiction, you're typically going to center your book on a popular figure whose exploits are fairly well known. Sergey Nabokov doesn't really fit the bill. He was neither famous nor infamous in his day, and his life wasn't well documented. His chief achievement was being Vladimir Nabokov's younger brother.But despite all that, Russell manages to paint a compelling portrait of a man who was emotionally and sometimes physically tortured by frenemies, enemies, and his family (including Vladimir). In his later years, Nabokov became one of thousands of gay men persecuted by the Nazis.How did Russell achieve such a feat? For starters, he has just enough information about Sergey Nabokov's life to craft a narrative. He also has three vivid backdrops: Russia in the runup to the Bolshevik Revolution, Jazz-age Paris, and Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. But most importantly, Russell has a supporting cast of very well known characters: apart from Sergey's older brother, the book features appearances by Sergei Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and many, many others.As it turns out, that's all the set dressing Russell needs to hang a story on. And to be fair, the story itself is interesting, always in motion. Nabokov was constantly on the run, never at home. He ran from bullies, from Stalin, from poverty, from opium, from Nazis, and from bombs dropped on Berlin by the Nazis' enemies. But most of all, Nabokov ran from himself.The book isn't perfect. In my opinion, it's a little overwrought in places, and there are also a few parts where the story drags. Nevertheless, Russell has given us a great view of someone whose life was turned upside down by the 20th century and who did his very best to face each new calamity with dignity.

Paul Russell has carefully researched the life of Sergy Nabokov to compose a novel of Sergy's life in Russia and Eastern Europe in the beginning of the 20th century. Sergy was born the second son of Russian aristocrats just 11 months after his famously talented brother, Vladimir. By then his parents were so in awe of their gifted, outgoing first born that Sergy seemed a poor second. He was sickly, introverted and stuttered. Later in adolescence, when his father observed that Sergy was gay, a failing in the eyes of many at the time, Sergy increasingly lost hope of gaining respect in his family or society.Sergy's father, a political activist who opposed the Bolsheviks, was assassinated during the Revolution of 1917. The Nabokovs had to quickly abandon their extensive land holdings and place in society to flee crumbling Russia. The diaspora separated families, friends, and countrymen. Russians went wherever they could, getting passports by any means available, to any country that would take them in. And Hitler was on the rise in Germany.Many people, including Sergy, struggled to keep their grip on reality during these political upheavals. Always a loner, Sergy had no one to turn to, including his brother Vladimir, who was faring well because of his writings and translations, pursuits which Sergy felt he could never attain. Being gay was a crime, and his stuttering was continuous, diminishing him in the eyes of many at that time.Even though the story is compelling, the lack of humor or light moments is regretful because there must have been some, somewhere.

Haven’t read a book in a long time where I actually found myself slowing down so as not to rush finishing it. I could have stayed with Sergey till the very end, and I suppose, thanks to this beautiful book, I did.

In this novel based on the extraordinary life of the gay brother of Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Russell re-creates the rich and changing world in which Sergey, his family and friends lived; from wealth and position in pre-revolutionary Russia, to the halls of Cambridge University, and the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. But it is the honesty and vulnerability of Sergey, our young gay narrator, that hook the reader: his stuttering childhood in the shadow of his brilliant brother, his opium-fueled evenings with his sometime lover Cocteau, his troubled love life on the margins of the Ballets Russes and its legendary cast, and his isolation in war-torn Berlin where he will ultimately be arrested, sent to a camp and die in 1945.A meticulously researched novel, in which you will meet an extraordinary cast of characters including Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Magnus Hirschfield, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Cocteau, and of course the master himself, Vladimir Nabokov, this is ultimately the story of a beautiful and vulnerable homosexual boy growing into an enlightened and courageous man.

Another amazing Paad.ul Russell read. I have long enjoyed Paul Russell. This book moves back and forth between Nabokovs' young life in St. Petersburg Russia just prior to the 1917 Revolution to December 1943 in Berlin. What an incredible, amazing, tragic, yet strong life. I have had the odd feeling that I may have read this book years ago, but nonetheless, Paul Russell, in all of his wonderful books, manages to paint a picture and tell a tale with such vivid detail, feeling, emotion that one has no difficulty following the story. And this on is an amazing one. And this is non fiction. Wow. Please take the moment or two that it may take to "get into" the story...it is well worth the ride. Thank you, Paul Russell for more hours of wonderful journey.

I have long been a fan of the novels of Paul Russell, one of the best modern witers of gay fiction. So I was excited when this novel was published after a gap of a few years. Russell is still on top form. Nabokov had a gay brother and Russell has imagined his life in pre-revolutionary Russia and as an emigre in Paris, England, Austria and Germany with authenticity, panache and poignancy. Sergey, who narrates his own story, is an attractive personality whose observations on the society of his times and on some of its prominent characters, such as Cocteau, are vivid, entertaining and credible. Love and loss are also a part of the story and Sergey's family relationships - with his heroic father and his successful brother - are especially powerful. The way Segey's father reacts to his son's homosexuality is especially well done with a moving portrait of mutual pain and alienation. Altogether, this is a very fine book: brilliant, subtle engaging and enduring.

This book is utterly breathtaking. Written in such beautiful English, almost every page is a wonder to read. It tells an incredible across one man's lifetime from the Russian revolution to the second world war. This is potentially a modern classic. I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys biographies, early 20th century history, and anoyone who has a love of the English language.

This beautiful and evocative novel brings to life the 20's and 30's in Paris and pre revolution Russia to life in a new light. It is very moving as the novel moves to its inevitable and tragic finale

Beautifully written. Evocative of the period, and Sergey is a cousin of mine, so perhaps I'm a little biased. Teresa

"Nabokov" [Vladimir] may ring a bell as the author of the years-ago controversial "Lolita." His younger [by 11 months] gay brother Sergey will not. In this meticulously researched and written biographical novel, the Vladimir Nabokov scholar Paul Russell has used all available historical and cultural resources to flesh out a convincing portrait of Sergey. Russell's acknowledged impetus to this work was a 2000 A.D. article in Salon.com magazine entitled "The Gay Nabokov" by Lev Grossman. Russell has woven the known facts of Sergey's life with his earlier research into the better known facts of Vladimir's biography and the cultural/historical context of the era. This sounds so far like a pedantic exercise, but it is quite the opposite. The novel consists of fully fleshed out characters speaking more than convincing dialogue within the tumultuous era of pre-revolution Russia, through the 20's and 30's in many European locales, especially Paris, as the formerly wealthy and aristocratic Nabokovs are dispersed following the Bolshevic Revolution. Sergey lived in the shadow of his celebrated brother. Born just 11 months later and gay [with 1 gay uncle on each side of his family] he was a perpetual source of dismay, especially to his father and brother, whose unqualified love and approval he never fully gained--to his great pain. Any homosexual who grew up in a homophobic environment will fully relate to Sergey's multiple hurts, pains and frustrations. Since this novel is written as an autobiography, his imprisonment and death in a Nazi workcamp is necessarily absent. The book ends with the Gestapo banging on his door. He died in 1945 of starvation, overwork and dysentery just 4 months shy of the camp's liberation. My one star of reservation is purely personal. I do find Sergey's associates in Paris unpleasant. Through his love of the arts, Sergey consorts with avant-garde aesthetes--Stein, Cocteau, the Ballet Russe celebrities and hangers on--immersed at times in their debaucheries and oh-so-clever verbal riffs. I found myself flipping over paragraphs from time to time, especially when the opium-addled Cocteau rattled on. Sergey's penultimate genuine love affair with a very wealthy Austrian is terminated by the Nazis. The book will be regarded as a work of genius by many readers.