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Before she could publish The Enchanter, her book about novelist Vladimir

Nabokov, Lila Azam Zanganeh needed the permission of the authors son,

Dmitri, ho died last eek at the age of !!" #ere she tells the stor$ of her

nights spent reading to him in %alm Beach&and learning about his famil$, and

remembering her on"

For three days and three nights, on a damp February weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, I read

Nabokov to Nabokov. I had traveled from New York to Palm Beach with a manuscript in my

suitcase to visit mitri Nabokov, the only son and literary e!ecutor of "ladimir Nabokov.

#he manuscript, my first book, contained a number of Nabokov $uotes for which I needed to

obtain rights before I could approach an %merican publisher. I knew that, in &''', mitri had

threatened to sue an Italian author named Pia Pera over a book titled Los Diary, a rewriting

of Lolita from (olita)s point of view. #o avoid an infringement lawsuit, Pera)s %merican publisher

had printed a scathing preface by mitri *+Pia Pera henceforth PP-, an Italian ournalist and

author of some stories that I have not read /01. %side from this, mitri had built a forbidding

reputation in the literary world for attacking the works of many a would2be Nabokovian. Fearing

the worst, I had emailed mitri the manuscript, hoping he would read it before I made it to

Florida, and that we might spend the evening discussing potential issues.

3y book was a curious combination of fiction and essay, of invention and interpretation. It posited

that Nabokov was the great writer of happiness. % notion that, over the years, almost invariably

turned small talk into opinionated tirades. 4appiness, evidently, did not keep good company with

nymphets and nympholepts.

Palm Beach felt like a sort of grotes$ue inversion of Nabokov)s short story +5pring in Fialta06

gigantic pine trees7 uniper shrubs7 sorry2go2rounds of concrete high2rises. 8ith a map and a

bicycle, I)d made my way to 9cean rive. I rehearsed with myself how I might parry various lines

of attack6 breathe, ac$uiesce, $ualify. +Your father hated didactic writings, hence this book had to

be e!tremely playful ... I had to imagine him.0 8ith an accelerated heart rate, I rang the bell of

mitri)s apartment. % beaming nurse opened the door, and I stepped into a living room adorned

with posters outlining, in &'th2century font, the casts of productions mitri had sung in during his

operatic career. La Bohmestood out:a memorable performance, as mitri later recounted, at

the #eatro di ;eggio ? and looking uncannily like his father at about the same age, was seated in

a wheelchair, at the head of the dining table. #o his left was %riane, a blond lady with an edgy

sense of humor who turned out to be an old friend of mitri)s, and like him a former opera singer.

mitri)s ice2blue eyes looked da@ed and sleepy that night.

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at the table for a three2course meal, and tried to ease into a semblance of small talk. 4e could yet

hate, and kill, the book I had worked on for the last several years. % moment later, mitri Nabo2

kov looked up, smiled, and declared he had come up with a good idea. 4e was too e!hausted to

read the manuscript, he confessed, so would I kindly read it out loud to him over the span of the

ne!t few daysA I glanced at %riane, who nodded in agreement.For the past C years, mitri has been a remarkably meticulous translator of his father)s earlier

works, from ;ussian to

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8e had all survived the revolution in our own way. 8e had created our stories. I had been born in

Paris and spent a fraction of time in #ehran. But soon the &'>' revolution swept away time as we

knew it. 3y uncle was assassinated. 3y grandmother suddenly died. 3y mother was the final

person to be called on the endless waiting list for the last flight out, amid an airport convulsed

with fear. #hat night, the borders were closed. 4er cousin walked west through the =urdishmountains. 3y father and I had been away and were never to return. I grew up in Paris

surrounded by Iranians who only ever talked about their homeland. #he things they had seen that

I would never see. #he ancient cities, the dreamy harbors, the sonorous street names that no

longer e!isted. I created a mental geography, and imagined, likely, another country.

In this, our new reality, my mother became an anchor. 5he had lost almost everything overnight.

Yet her strength was to believe in culture. 5he wanted me to ac$uire the one thing that could

never be taken away. 5o we read, listened to music, learned unknown languages. 8estern

literature e!isted alongside centuries of Persian tradition.