Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, McGraw-Hill, 1969. (Ada can be found in many public libraries and is available online from Amazon.com and from Barnes & Noble. Also published as a Penguin Classic by Penguin UK.)

"What a hoaxer, that old V.V.!"

Ada is perhaps a culmination of Nabokov's experience, and nearly a fictive concordance of his work. An effluvium of references to Nabokov's own life, works, characters, themes, and interests adorn this family chronicle with a science fiction setting. Cameo references to John Shade and 'Ben Sirine,' the transcendental presence of Alice in Wonderland, and distinct but garbled echoes of Pale Fire, Lolita, Speak, Memory, and Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin establish a unique and believeable constructed reality.

"Never, in a career characterized by extremes of opinion about his work, did a work produce sharper differences of opinion than did Ada."
Andrew Field

"Our Vladimir Vladimirovitch is an extraordinary artist, in the present situation of the novel absolutely a law unto himself."
Alfred Kazin

"The book exudes a delight, bordering upon vanity, in its own manic, overwrought, and unnatural vocabulary, its inexhaustible translations, allusions, puns, and anagrams."
Mary Ellmann

4/27/04: Visit ADAonline, featuring the full text of Ada with extensive annotations by Brian Boyd.

Scholarly Criticism of Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle:

Couturier, Maurice. "The Poerotic Novel: Nabokov's Lolita and Ada"
Il'in, Sergey. "Pribavliaia nuli" [In Russian, a response to the article by Viktoriia Shokhina listed below]
Shokhina, Viktoriia. "Mnemozina v ob"iatiiakh Vana Vina" [In Russian, published on-line as part of "Ex libris NG"]
Sklyarenko, Alexey. "Aleksandr Blok's Dreams as Enacted in Ada by Van Veen--and Vice Versa"
Sklyarenko, Alexey. "Terra i Antiterra: dva mira, dve pravdy" (in Word format)
Sklyarenko, Alexey. "IAgody 'Ady' i iady IAgody: otravlenia u Nabokova i v Sovetskoi Rossii" (in Word format)
Sklyarenko, Alexey. "Genealogicheskoe drevo iada semeistva Vinov: rol' pushkinskogo 'Anchara' v povesti Turgeneva "Zatish'e" i v Ade Nabokova" (in Word format)
Sklyarenko, Alexey. "Ada kak roman-sharadoid" (in Word format)
Sklyarenko, Alexey. "Poluchit li babushka rozhdestvenskuiu otkrytku, ili otchego zagorelsia baronskii ambar v Ade?" (in Word format)