SPEAK, MEMORY

　　From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of thefinest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was firstpublished by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence andthen assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman'sLibrary edition includes, for the first time, the previouslyunpublished "Chapter 16"--the most significant unpublished piece ofwriting by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate--whichprovided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory.　　Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilizedfamily, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror,education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. TheNabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a lifeimmersed in politics and literature on splendid country estatesuntil their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when theauthor was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes avanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.