Best known for his controversial novel, Lolita, Nabokov is one of my personal heroes. Here is a man who made another language his own. He celebrated English just as much for its phonetics as its rich vocabulary, and made spectacular use of both. He used his adopted tongue to create a triumphant work of art that precious few native speakers could have written. He was a brilliant mind, in any language, and lived a very full and cosmopolitan life.Some Nabokov trivia: he was fascinated with butterflies. Those doodles on his portrait? He drew them. Even late in his life, chasing butterflies was a passion of his. I think that's perfect - one of the best writers of the 20th century, and all he wants to do is catch a butterfly in his net.
