Ada to Zembla

'Nabokov's novels are playgrounds of perfection and dungeons of despair'    Exile, émigré and refugee, Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was buffeted by the tides of his times, from the Russian Revolution to the rise of Hitler. But he converted that personal anarchy into a seductive, often controversial, art which searches for meaning amid cruelty and loss.   In Ada to Zembla: The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov, David Vernon explores the works of one of the twentieth century's key writers: