Book cover with Cyrillic writing and assorted illustrations in color, including playing cards, a turtle, a mouse, a lizard, the White Rabbit, and a weeping Alice.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–1898), author
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977), translator
Sergei A. Zalshupin (1898–1931), illustrator
An︠i︡a v stran︠i︡e chudes (Ania in the Land of Wonders)
Berlin: Izd. Gamaiun, 1923
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

An︠i︡a v stran︠i︡e chudes (Ania in the Land of Wonders)

Vladimir Nabokov first read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) in English at age six. He wrote its most famous Russian translation 18 years later while an undergraduate at Cambridge University. His first substantial published work, he was paid the then-considerable sum of five dollars for writing it. To make the story relevant for a Russian audience, Nabokov retold it in a Russian style and gave Alice a new name: “Ania.” Like all of Nabokov’s writings, his translation of Alice was banned in the USSR, and was not published there until 1989. This edition, the first, had already become a rarity.

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