Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited | Teaching Key Figures

Character Descriptions

This section provides a short description of all the major characters in the book. This can be printed out as a study guide for students, used as a "key" for leading a class discussion, or you can jump to the quiz/homework section to find worksheets that incorporate these descriptions into a variety of question formats.

Characters

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - Winner of a Nobel prize for literature in 1933, this character is a poet and writer trying to engage and befriend Nabokov in Paris in the 1930s. However, he attains only superficial success.

Colette - This is the adult pseudonym of Claude Deprès.

Claude Deprès - This character is the nine-year-old girl with whom the ten-year-old Nabokov falls in love while on summer holiday at Biarritz, France, in 1909. The image of this character "prefigures and clearly inspires Lolita," the character in the novel of the same name...
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