After the blazing success of 'Lolita' in America and the sale of its movie rights to James Harris and Stanley Kubrick, Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Véra moved to Switzerland, taking up residence at the Montreux Palace Hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. Signing a lease in the summer of 1961, they began residing there that October during the last months of Nabokov’s work on 'Pale Fire'. The Montreux Palace Hotel remained Nabokov’s final home and creative space for the rest of his life.

If you can ever chance a visit, you will see the Alps rising behind the hotel alongside the lake and sprawling green fields, which are home to the butterflies Nabokov loved to chase and collect.