Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, he wrote his first nine novels in Russian while living in Berlin before achieving international acclaim after moving to the United States and switching to English, becoming a citizen in 1945 and later settling in Montreux, Switzerland. His 1955 novel Lolita and 1962 novel Pale Fire both rank among the twentieth century's greatest works of fiction, and he was also an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems, praised by Time magazine for a vivid English style combining Joycean wordplay with a Proustian evocation of mood.