S dniom razhdjenia!
No, that title’s not a mistake, it’s an homage.
Today is the birthday of novelist Vladimir Nabokov. Though he was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on this day in 1899 Nabokov and his family had to flee Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. He sailed to America with his family in 1940, arriving in New York City poor and almost completely unknown. He struggled to support his family with a series of jobs teaching at New England colleges. Then, in the summer of 1951, he and his wife drove to Colorado in their Oldsmobile station wagon and he began to work on his most infamous novel, Lolita.
The novel was hugely controversial, but the controversy helped the novel become a big best-seller. Nabokov was finally able to quit teaching and move with his wife to a hotel in Switzerland.
