What was The Original of Laura?

The Original of Laura is the final, unfinished novel by the Russian-born American author Vladimir Nabokov.

Upon his death in 1977, Nabokov left the work in the form of index cards and instructed his wife, Véra, to destroy them. She chose instead to preserve the manuscript in a Swiss bank vault. Following Véra’s death, their son, Dmitri, eventually decided to publish the work in 2009.

Although the text is highly incomplete, it retains Nabokov’s characteristic wordplay and allusions. The narrative centers on an obese intellectual named Philip and his wife, Flora, who is the subject of a scandalous novel written by a former lover. The work is noted for its exploration of mortality, specifically through Philip’s pursuit of auto-dissolution, or a willed erasure of the self.1