Helmers, Rutger Not Russian Enough? Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Opera (review)
Journal: The Slavonic and East European Review
Year: 2016

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 340 mission: ‘to borrow Nabokov back from the scholars’ (p. 7) and to demonstrate the ways in which Nabokov transformed himself into an American writer. Some may think that he achieves his aims, but the character he portrays is rarely appealing, inspiring bewilderment more than wonder, whilst the provocative, audacious America into which Nabokov so eagerly immersed himself is reduced, by the end of the book, to something drab and indistinct. Others, therefore, might feel