Mary

About Mary

A gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia. • Written in 1925, Mary is Nabokov’s first novel. Like his other early masterpieces, it bears witness to Nabokov’s sensual mastery of language. 

“In MARY we see him evoking the first of what became an increasingly brilliant series of worlds.” – Newsweek

In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair.  His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia.  In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin’s, who, he discovers, is Mary’s husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.