The Gift

The Gift, novel by Vladimir Nabokov, originally published serially (in expurgated form in Russian) as Dar in 1937–38. It was published in its complete form as a book in 1952. The Gift is set in post-World War I Berlin, where Nabokov himself had been an émigré. Steeped in satiric detail about the Russian émigré community, the novel tells parallel stories of the protagonist Fyodor’s maturation as a gifted young writer and of his love affair with Zina, a fellow émigré.