From Nabokov to Nichita Stanescu by way of José Kozer and MTC Cronin

For me reading is a bit like chain-smoking with one book leading me on to another. Sebald’s essay in Campo Santo ‘Dream Textures: A Brief Note on Nabokov’ sparked the desire to explore Nabokov. I’d read Lolita in my twenties and been repelled by its combination of, to me, moral-aesthetic emptiness and literary stardom. If Sebald, whose Austerlitz and Vertigo must count among the late 20th century’s greatest novels, rated Nabokov so highly I felt I needed to revisit his work. Sebald singled out The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Speak, Memory so I read them both. I quickly understood Sebald’s enthusiasm. Both are masterpieces: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight with its mix of humour, sadness and wild inventiveness; Speak, Memory for its beautifully written, exquisitely detailed summoning of a lost world, Russia before the Revolution.