Summary

In 1922 Nabokov graduates from Cambridge and continues to write. To supplement his writing income, like many other expatriates (or émigrés), teaches language lessons. He notes that there were large colonies of Russians intact in Paris and Berlin but he does not choose to affiliate with them, instead assimilating into the culture of wherever it is he is living. He notes that many democratic Russian families fled Russia around the same time that his family left.

While he is in exile—teaching and writing—he also composes chess problems for master players. He derives as much pleasure from the cognitive problem solving as he does from touching the cherished chess set that he has carried and loved all the way from the Russia of his childhood.

Analysis

When Nabokov first flees the Russia of his childhood he associates the nostalgia for his home country...