According to Paul Russell, “There were certainly moments when I paused and asked myself: Why am I doing this? Why am I essentially forging a dead man’s memoirs? … And every time I was ready to abandon the project, I remembered that Vladimir had done everything he could to erase Sergey’s existence. I would think, Damn it, I’m going to give this silenced brother a voice.”
“Vladimir” in the above quote is Vladimir Nabokov. “Sergey” is Nabokov’s practically forgotten younger brother, who died in a German concentration camp near the close of World War II. And that forged memoir is The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (Cleis Press), the latest novel from Paul Russell, native Memphian and for nearly 30 years a faculty member at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
