No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer is quite as beguiling as that of Vladimir Nabokov’s to Vera Slonim. She shared his delight at the enchantment of life’s trifles and literature’s treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humor of any woman he had met. From their first encounter in 1923, Vladimir’s letters to Vera chronicle a half-century-long love story, one that is playful, romantic, and memorable. At the same time, the letters reveal much about their author. We see the infectious fascination with which Vladimir observed everything — animals, people, speech, landscapes and cityscapes — and glimpse his ceaseless work on his poems, plays, stories, nove