Top ten expatriate tales

Malcolm Pryce, author of a series of comic private detective novels set in Aberystwyth, compiled a top ten list of expatriate tales for the Guardian.

One title on Pryce's list:

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov writes an elegy to his lost childhood in pre-revolutionary St Petersburg; the backward lens of time imparting a particularly golden hue to such remembered exotica as Pears soap, Golden Syrup and countless other marvels shipped out from London. The prose is wonderful and occasionally sublime, especially in the child's eye view of the five-day train journey each summer to Biarritz.

Read about another tale on Pryce's list.

Speak, Memory figures among Susan Cheever's 20 favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue