Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

‘A great work of art, radiant and rapturous, affirming the power of love and imagination’ The New York Times Book Review

Ada or Ardor is a romance that follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van Veen on his uncle’s country estate, in a ‘dream-bright’ America, through eighty years of rapture, as they cross continents, are continually parted and reunited, come to learn the strange truth about their singular relationship and, decades later, put their extraordinary experiences into words.

Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, Nabokov’s longest, richest novel is a love story, but also a fairy tale, a historical parody, an erotic satire, an exploration of the passing of time and a supreme work of the imagination.