...Literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him…But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go- between. That go- between, that prism, is the art of literature....

Russian American poet, novelist, and educator. Born to a wealthy and prominent St. Petersburg family that barely escaped the 1917 revolution, Nabokov was educated at Cambridge University. He settled into the Russian émigré communities of Germany and later France, becoming known as a poet, novelist, and critic. In 1940 Nabokov came to the United States, where he taught literature at Wellesley College and Cornell University, and, now writing in flawless English, published four more novels and numerous essays, stories, and poems. He became an international celebrity and literary icon in 1958, when his controversial novel Lolita (1955) was finally published in America. With the earnings from Lolita Nabokov retired from teaching and moved into a luxury hotel in Switzerland to devote himself to writing such classic novels as Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969), as well as translating his early Russian novels into English. See also nabokov.com.