Part biography and part detective story, Nabokov's Blues explores the rich and varied place butterflies hold in Nabokov's fiction, as well as far-reaching questions of biogeography and evolution, and the worldwide crisis of ecology and biodiversity.
`In Nabokov's Blues, Kurt Johnson and Steve Coates tell a smart story about one of the century's towering intellects and his lesser-known passion: entomology. The literati considered Nabokov's butterfly obsession to be an affectation; scientists sniffed at Nabokov, the amateur. The authors bring balance to the picture, cogently arguing that Nabokov made serious contributions and would have likely made more had his other job not been so time consuming.' American Scientist