Jean Christophe

I marked it on my first read through, looked it up on my second.

Here is a description of a book that Mr. Taxovich say Humbert's estranged wife, Valeria, would like to read.... I did the research to see what it was, and I'm sure seeing it at that part of the novel (if I had read Jean Christophe) would have made me laugh:

Jean-Christophe is a novel, written in the "bildungsroman" fashion, in ten volumes by Romain Rolland published between 1904 and 1912, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. It was translated into English by Gilbert Cannan.

The central character, Jean-Christophe Krafft, is a German musician of Belgian extraction, a composer of genius whose life is depicted from cradle to grave. He undergoes great hardships and spiritual struggles, balancing his pride in his own talents with the necessity of earning a living and taking care of those around him. Tormented by injustices against his friends, forced to flee on several occasions as a result of his brushes with authority and his own conscience, he finally finds peace in a remote corner of Switzerland before returning in triumph to Paris a decade later.

I ended up finding out after looking through the Notes on this book in the back of the novel that neither Humbert Humbert or Nabokov liked the book ;).