It’s perfectly straightforward: Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it. There is no superior imperative. The argument about saving it for the “greater good” of the literary world is null, as far as I’m concerned. There are parallel universes, might-have-been worlds, full of lost works, and no doubt some of them would have been masterpieces. But our desire to possess them all is just a neurosis, a completeness complex, as though we must have everything that’s going and it’s a tragedy if we don’t. It’s nonsense, an impossible desire for absoluteness. At best, it’s natural curiosity – personally, I’d love to read Nabokov’s last work, but since he didn’t want me to read it, I won’t – and it’s hardly modest to make one’s own desire more important than his.

I don’t believe that Nabokov was deviously asking his wife and son to burn it while secretly hoping that they would ignore him. Anyway, it’s an imponderable, and so not a good basis for ignoring him.

As for the argument that he could have burnt the pages himself if he’d wanted to, I’m not impressed.

It’s more likely he wanted to have the pages around while he was still around to think about them. Who knows? Psychologically, burning them himself is not the same as arranging for them to follow him into oblivion.

In all honour, we must honour the only fact: that he said “Burn it.” Everything else is speculation – mostly self-serving speculation on the part of the Nabokov industry, the last people we should listen to.

Interview by Francesca Steele

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Sarah Palin and the Palindromes: 7 extraordinary connections
• Physics for Future Presidents: The Podcasts
• 10 Books Not To Read Before You Die