Vladimir Nabokov
Russian:
Владимир Владимирович Набоков
.Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery, and had a big interest in chess problems.Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intricate wordplay and descriptive detail that characterized all his works.Lolita was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels; Pale Fire (1962) was ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951), was listed eighth on the publisher's list of the 20th century's greatest nonfiction. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.
Ada o ardore
Vladimir Nabokov
Dopo aver raggiunto le vette dello scandalo e della gloria, dopo aver pubblicato capolavori come Il dono, Lolita o Fuoco pallido, Nabokov decise di scrivere un romanzo dove avrebbe sfrenato i suoi estri e i suoi capricci più nascosti e più cari, sfidando il lettore a seguirlo, come un seduttore irresistibile e sottilmente perverso. E fu Ada. Sarebbe stata una storia d'amore, di quell'amore "normale e misterioso" che è come la rosa vera mischiata alle altre in un negozio di fiori finti, "puor attraper le client". E anche una storia erotica. E, dietro a tutto, sarebbe stata una celebrazione del dettaglio. "Il dettaglio è sempre benvenuto" diceva Nabokov. Dettaglio è "l'evento senza precedenti e irripetibile" che si staglia fra miliardi di simili - e con ciò in fondo obbliga la letteratura a esistere, se non altro per repplicargli con un tessuto di parole che dell'irripetibile mostri qualche filo. Ogni lettore, non appena comincerà ad addentrarsi in Ada, avrà l'impressione di trovarsi davanti a uno di quei libri in cui l'autore ha inteso mettere tutto, come in una vasta arca, grande quanto un leggendario maniero familiare o per lo meno la sua sterminata e veleggiante soffitta. E in quella soffitta costellata di segreti, come nel parco di quel maniero, cosparso di nascondigli erotici, sarà felice di perdersi. Scritto in inglese, Ada è stato pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1969.
Ada or Ardor
Vladimir Nabokov
Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat.This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Vladimir Nabokov
Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the superb work of an imagination at white heat.This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.
Ada ya da Arzu
Vladimir Nabokov
Ada, Adoçka, Duşka! Vaniada, Nevada, Theresa! Voltemand, Vaskö dö Gama! Vaniçka, Adalucinda! Vandemonian, Ladore! Adore, Ada, Hades!
Ada ya da Arzu´da Nabokov okura, hafızamız sayesinde çocukluğumuzu ya da arkada bıraktığımız `altın çağı` yanımızda taşıyabileceğimizi hatırlatır. Bu bilinen, basit düşünceyi Nabokov olağanüstü bir şiirsellik ve şimdi ile geçmişi aynı anda aynı cümlede yaşatabilme gayretiyle
ayakta tutar. (…) Lolita´nın Humbert Humbert´inin cenneti bir çocuğun aşkında yaşaması gibi Van ile Ada da çocukluk aşklarını bütün hayatlarına yayarak cennette yaşamak
isterler. Nabokov, ters, zarif ve çok iddialı bir taklayla
çocukluğu yaşlılığa taşımayı denemiştir burada. Bu altın çağı yaşadığı günde ne Amerika´da ne de Rusya´da yaşatamayacağını bildiği için Nabokov bu iki ülkenin hatıralarından üçüncü bir hayal ülke, edebi bir cennet yaratmıştır (…) Ada ya da Arzu´da Nabokov´un bütün şakaları, aykırılıkları ve tuhaf güzelliğiyle Türkçe konuştuğunu hayranlıkla görüyoruz.
ORHAN PAMUK
Adevărata viaţă a lui Sebastian Knight
Vladimir Nabokov
"Adevărata viaţă a lui Sebastian Knight" este primul roman scris în limba engleză de către Vladimir Nabokov, în perioada pe care a petrecut-o, în sărăcie, la Paris. Naratorul, V., este prins în prima sa încercare literară, aceea de a scrie o biografie decentă şi realistă a fratelui său vitreg, celebrul romancier Sebastian Knight. Pentru a reuşi acest lucru, va reface traseul vieţii acestuia, îi va intervieva colegii de la Cambridge, prietenii şi fostele iubite. Totul pentru a combate biografia oficială, eronată, scrisă de fostul secretar al lui Knight, Goodman.
Bend Sinister
Vladimir Nabokov
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. It is first and foremost a compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.
Collected Poems
Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's masterly Collected Poems span the decades of his career, from 'Music', written in 1914, to the short, playful 'To Vera', composed in 1974. 'The University Poem', one of Nabokov's major poetic works, is here in English for the first time: an extraordinary autobiographical poem looking back at his time at Cambridge, with its dinners, girls and memories, it is suffused with rich description, wit and verbal dexterity. Included too are the surreally comic 'A Literary Dinner', the enchanting, 'Eve', the wryly humorous 'An Evening of Russian Poetry' and a meditation on the act of creation, 'Tolstoy', as well as verse written on America, lepidoptery, sport, love and Nabokov's Russian homeland.
Collected Stories
Vladimir Nabokov
A man at his desk is interrupted by the appearance of a woodland elf in his room; the piano maestro Bachmann ends his career; a barber shaves the face of a man who once tortured him; a shy dreamer makes a deal with the Devil. In these sixty-five stories of magic and melancholy, Nabokov displays an astonishing range of inventiveness, with dazzling sleight of hand, fantastical fairy tales, intellectual games and enchanting glimpses into lives of ambiguity and loss.
The collection displays Nabokov's astonishing range of technical and formal inventiveness: the dazzling sleight of hand, fanciful fairy tales, ingenious puzzles, enchanting vignettes and haunting melancholic narratives full of disturbing ambiguities.
Cose trasparenti
Vladimir Nabokov
Hugh Person, giovane redattore di una casa editrice americana, torna in Svizzera spinto da «qualcosa che ha a che vedere con le apparizioni degli spettri» – quello della moglie, in particolare, da lui uccisa otto anni prima. Il caso, regista perverso e giocoso delle nostre vite, muterà in castigo (e catarsi) la catena delle coincidenze inseguite dall’involontario uxoricida nel suo sonnambolico viaggio a ritroso nel tempo. E la pietà del narratore assumerà Person, con il suo corpo goffo, il suo intelletto limitato dal dolore, la sua anima straziata dagli incubi più atroci, nell’altissimo cielo della trasparenza: una misteriosa dimensione dove a esseri e cose è dato spostarsi agevolmente nello spazio e nel tempo. Non attraverso la psicologia, che agli occhi di Nabokov è sempre vicolo cieco: attraverso, piuttosto, il prodigio di un linguaggio nel quale si compenetrano nomi, sogni, fuochi, stanze, echi, ricordi. Da quel linguaggio anche noi veniamo sollevati in un lieve, traslucido universo dove presente e passato non costruiscono il futuro, dove i fantasmi del pensiero rinnegano beffardi le aspettative create dalla triviale causalità.
Curso de literatura europea
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov, lejos de generalidades y teorizaciones, enseña a leer a sus alumnos, a «acariciar los detalles» y a apasionarse con la lectura de Jane Austen, de Dickens y Stevenson, de Proust, de Flaubert, de Joyce o de Kakfa. Esas lecciones apasionadas y apasionantes, reconstruidas más tarde por Fredson Bowers a partir de los apuntes del maestro, son una ocasión única para releer a fondo las grandes novelas de la literatura europea.
A lo largo de casi dos décadas, antes de alcanzar la celebridad con Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov impartió cursos de literatura en las universidades estadounidenses de Wellesley y Cornell, y sus clases han llegado a constituir una leyenda. No es frecuente que los estudiantes tengan por maestro a uno de los mejores autores del momento, pero tampoco lo es que un novelista añada a su talento una vocación didáctica tan nítida y eficaz, y tan libre de convencionalismos académicos.
Dar
Vladimir Nabokov
„Dar” Vladimira Nabokova (1899–1977) jest według wielu krytyków najwybitniejszą rosyjskojęzyczną powieścią, niektórzy nawet nazywają ten utwór największą dwudziestowieczną powieścią rosyjską w ogóle.
Jest to książka o człowieku szczęśliwym. Czyni go takim talent, dar obserwacji i wrażliwości, poczucie własnej rangi pisarskiej i wreszcie odwzajemniona miłość. Powieść jest zarazem hołdem złożonym literaturze rosyjskiej, a także inteligentną i bezwzględną polemiką z niektórymi jej nurtami. Znaleźć w niej można również coś w rodzaju programu artystycznego Nabokova oraz jeden z najbardziej kompletnych zarysów jego przekonań metafizycznych.
Przede wszystkim jednak „Dar” to skomplikowany i wspaniale funkcjonujący mechanizm literacki, nieustannie zwodzący czytelnika, naprowadzający go na fałszywe tropy – po to, by dać mu całą pełnię i głębię satysfakcji estetycznej.
Despair
Vladimir Nabokov
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - thirty years after its original publication -Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann Karlovich, a man who undertakes the perfect crime - his own murder.
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
Vladimir Nabokov
Details of a sunset --
Bad day --
Orache --
Return of Chorb --
Passenger --
Letter that never reached Russia --
Guide to Berlin --
Doorbell --
Thunderstorm --
Reunion --
Slice of life --
Christmas --
Busy man.
Disperazione
Vladimir Nabokov
Hermann, un russo di ascendenze tedesche che vive a Berlino, durante un viaggio d’affari a Praga si imbatte in un vagabondo la cui fisionomia gli sembra identica alla sua. Irrequieto, insoddisfatto – e convinto della propria assoluta superiorità intellettuale –, Hermann concepisce un piano criminale: stipulata una ingente assicurazione sulla vita, induce il barbone a uno scambio di abiti, dopodiché lo uccide. In attesa di incassare l’assicurazione con l’aiuto della moglie, rimane nascosto in un villaggio dei Pirenei, dove tuttavia si rende conto che il suo piano perfetto è miseramente fallito. Si è lasciato dietro, infatti, un indizio destinato a svelare l’identità del morto – le cui fattezze del resto non ingannano la polizia, già sulle sue tracce. Non resta che aspettare la cattura imminente, e ripercorrere gli eventi in un memoriale dove si incanala l’ultima evidenza – questa sì, persuasiva – di una presunta eccezionalità. Un classico racconto poliziesco, si direbbe, che si intreccia con una beffarda storia di doppi, il tutto germogliato all’ombra frondosa di Dostoevskij. Ma non è così. Dostoevskij è solo il punto di partenza da cui Nabokov deliberatamente avvia il gioco che rende inconfondibile la sua arte – un gioco oscillante tra fallace percezione di sé e parodia di tale autorappresentazione. Il criminale ignora ciò che l’artista conosce bene: il divario tra il desiderio e la frustrante realtà. Solo l’opera d’arte, che sopprime ogni barriera spalancando altri luoghi, altri tempi, altre psicologie, consente di sfuggire a un mondo imperfetto.
Fahles Feuer.
Vladimir Nabokov
An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king. Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, this darkly witty novel of suspense, literary one-upmanship, and political intrigue achieves that rarest of things in literature - perfect tragicomic balance.
Fuoco pallido
Vladimir Nabokov
Nel dicembre del 1961, sei anni dopo la pubblicazione di Lolita, Nabokov termina Fuoco pallido, prodigio di invenzione e, per alcuni, summa della sua opera: romanzo audace e segreto, che risulta anche più sconcertante quanto alla forma, poiché è costituito da un magistrale poema di 999 versi con relativo commento. Al centro del poema il sessantunenne John Shade, celebre poeta nonché professore al Wordsmith College di una immaginaria cittadina americana della Costa orientale. In quest’opera i ricordi di una vita si mescolano a interrogativi metafisici sull’«abisso immondo, intollerabile» della morte, divenuti sempre più pressanti dopo il suicidio della giovane figlia. Eppure il poema si chiude su un’ironica quanto serena dichiarazione di fede in un vago aldilà di cui l’arte, con la sua armonia, rappresenta una tacita promessa. Shade ignora che la morte, beffarda, è di nuovo in agguato. Al centro del commento, invece, lo snob, egocentrico, bizzarro, importuno Charles Kinbote, visiting professor nella medesima università, nonché amico ed estimatore di Shade. Le sue note – ora pettegole, ora accademiche, ora nostalgiche – vorrebbero condurre il lettore a una corretta interpretazione del poema ricostruendo le affascinanti avventure del suo presunto ispiratore, vale a dire Kinbote stesso, esule di alto lignaggio da Zembla, regno immerso nelle brume di un’esotica Europa. Ma quelle note finiscono per suonare come un’esilarante parodia di due mondi contrapposti, l’aristocratica Zembla precipitata nella Rivoluzione Estremista e la borghese, prosaica, benpensante America che ha accolto il fuggitivo in pericolo. Mirabile mimesi della realtà, Fuoco pallido ci guida così alla ricostruzione di uno scenario complesso attraverso tortuosi e frammentari percorsi che aprono interrogativi sempre nuovi: Kinbote è un re in esilio, un pedante profugo di terre lontane, o un soggetto psichiatrico afflitto da monomania? E il poema stesso è autentico, o non piuttosto una parodia, o magari un plagio? Plurimi sono i livelli di realtà che si intersecano nel libro, i falsipiani che moltiplicano le prospettive dell’intreccio rendendolo vertiginoso: Fuoco pallido si avvia sereno come una pastorale, esplode in commedia festosa, si inerpica fino al culmine dolente di un’elegia, prende il largo sotto le sembianze di racconto avventuroso, ma la sua nota dominante resta quella tragica della solitudine. Fuoco pallido, scritto in inglese tra il 1960 e il 1961, apparve nel 1962.
Glory
Vladimir Nabokov
Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twenty-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him.
"The themes we associate with Nabokov — the romance of emigres, sexual frustration, the nostalgia of youth — shine again, sorrowfully or blithely, but always adding an illuminating dimension to what went before or what comes after." - Kirkus Reviews
Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, Martin embarks on a "perilous, daredevil project"--an illegal attempt to re-enter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919. He succeeds--but at a terrible cost.
Göz
Vladimir Nabokov
“O kadınla, o Matilda’yla Berlin’deki émigré varoluşumun ilk yıllarında tanıştım, iki zaman diliminin yirmili yıllarının başlarında:
bu yüzyılın ve kendi berbat hayatımın...”
Göz, s.11
“‘Göz’de, romancılık kariyerinde ilk kez olmak üzere Nabokov birinci tekil şahısta bir roman yazar. (...) Nabokov’un ‘Göz’de yaptığı büyük teknik yenilik, görüş açısını cüretkârca kullanışı, daha sonraki sanatının habercisidir; neredeyse delicesine benmerkezci anlatıcılarının; roman birinci ve üçüncü tekil şahıslar arasında kayarcasına yol alır. (...) ‘Göz’ün anlatıcısı ‘gerçekten’ ölür mü, yoksa öldüğünü mü sanır? Anlatıcı ve Smurov bir ve tek kişi midirler, öyle ise, ‘biri’ ‘öbürü’nün bilincinde midir?”
Brian Boyd (Nabokov: The Russian Years)
Habla, memoria
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov no podía escribir una autobiografía corriente, y "Habla, memoria" lo demuestra. A través de una serie de relatos largos, Nabokov, con el pretexto de contar su vida, construye un libro tan ameno, original, divertido y estilizado como sus novelas. Nabokov rememora aquí sus meditaciones infantiles en el retrete, sus vacaciones en la finca campestre de la familia, sus amoríos adolescentes con Tamara en los museos de San Petersburgo; narra las peripecias de su huida de las huestes de Lenin y de su exilio europeo; escribe un homenaje a la honestidad política de su padre y a la belleza y ternura de su madre; pero lo que menos importa son los temas, porque de lo que se trata al fin y al cabo es de celebrar un festín de ingenio e inteligencia, de mordacidad despiadada y de nostalgia desgarradora, y en el que Nabokov es fiel a los consejos que daba a sus estudiantes de literatura: «¡Acariciad los detalles! ¡Los divinos detalles!»
Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's dream diary, published for the first time--and placed in biographical and literary context
On October 14th, 1964, Vladimir Nabokov, a lifelong insomniac, began a curious experiment. Over the next eighty days, immediately upon waking, he wrote down his dreams, following the instructions he found in An Experiment with Time by the British philosopher John Dunne. The purpose was to test the theory that time may go in reverse, so that, paradoxically, a later event may generate an earlier dream. The result--published here for the first time--is a fascinating diary in which Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams (and subsequent daytime episodes) on 118 index cards, which afford a rare glimpse of the artist at his most private. More than an odd biographical footnote, the experiment grew out of Nabokov's passionate interest in the mystery of time, which influenced many of his novels, including the late masterpiece Ada.
Insomniac Dreams, edited by leading Nabokov authority Gennady Barabtarlo, presents the text of Nabokov's dream experiment, illustrated with a selection of his original index cards, and provides rich annotations and analysis that put them in the context of his life and writings. The book also includes previously unpublished records of Nabokov's dreams from his letters and notebooks and shows important connections between his fiction and private writings on dreams and time.
Invitation to a Beheading
Vladimir Nabokov
An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here
Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his final days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his prison cell.
Invito a una decapitazione
Vladimir Nabokov
Il protagonista di questo romanzo, Cincinnatus C., ha un difetto: è «opaco», nel senso che i suoi pensieri e le sue sensazioni non sono trasparenti agli occhi di coloro che lo circondano – perciò produce «una strana impressione, come di un solitario, oscuro ostacolo in quel mondo di anime reciprocamente trasparenti». In quel mondo, che lungi dall’essere un paradiso – come gli ignari sarebbero inclini a pensare – è piuttosto il suo beffardo capovolgimento, l’opacità non è solo un difetto, ma una grave colpa, forse la più grave: è il segno che rivela la «turpitudine gnostica» del singolo. In quel mondo si viene condannati a morte non per ciò che si fa ma per ciò che si è. Quindi Cincinnatus dovrà essere decapitato – e non sa quando. Cincinnatus non ha fatto nulla di turpe, ma certamente è uno gnostico, se non altro perché vede il mondo attorno a sé come l’abborracciata messa in scena di un funesto demiurgo. E la sua percezione è esatta: la cella, con il ragno obeso che condivide la vita del condannato, e tutto ciò che gli appare – il carceriere, il compagno di prigionia, la moglie in visita con codazzo di parenti e l’amante del momento, la madre, la figlia dodicenne del direttore del penitenziario («volatile fanciulla» in cui si riconoscerà un prodromo, carcerario e lancinante, di Lolita): tutto è parodia. Salvo che, in quel mondo, le parodie uccidono. E uccidono mantenendo un’aria «di calda camaraderie» (è la perfezione della tortura). Questo romanzo, che Nabokov scrisse nel 1934 a Berlino distogliendosi dalla stesura del Dono, come se costretto da una mostruosa pressione sulla nuca, è il primo e più chiaroveggente ad avere per oggetto la società totalitaria. Il che, oltre alla sua strepitosa inventiva letteraria, dovrebbe bastare a farne un romanzo per tutti. Invito a una decapitazione è apparso in russo nel 1935 e in inglese nel 1959.
King, Queen, Knave
Vladimir Nabokov
The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men's clothing emporium. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle's condescension in his aunt's bed.
La Méprise
Vladimir Nabokov
"La méprise, dans un esprit de parenté absolu avec le reste de mes livres, n'a aucun commentaire social à faire, ni aucun message à accrocher entre ses dents. Ce livre n'exalte pas l'organe spirituel de l'homme et n'indique pas à l'humanité quelle est la porte de sortie. Il contient bien moins " d'idées " que tous ces plantureux et vulgaires romans que l'on acclame si hystériquement dans la petite allée des rumeurs entre les balivernes et les huées. (...) Hermann et Humbert sont identiques comme deux dragons peints par le même artiste à différentes périodes de sa vie peuvent se ressembler. Tous deux sont des vauriens névrosés ; cependant il existe une verte allée du Paradis où Humbert a le droit de se promener à la nuit tombée une fois dans l'année ; mais l'Enfer ne mettra jamais Hermann en liberté surveillée."
Vladimir Nabokov
Lance
Vladimir Nabokov
'The illegible signature of teetering disaster'
Three great stories—"The Aurelian", "Signs and Symbols" and "Lance"—the last both a derisive attack on science-fiction and an attempt to imagine the real pain and horror that would accompany space travel.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
Laughter in the Dark
Vladimir Nabokov
"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster." Thus begins Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark; this, the author tells us, is the whole story except that he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and brilliantly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction. Amidst a Weimar-era milieu of silent film stars, artists, and aspirants, Nabokov creates a merciless masterwork as Albinus, an aging critic, falls prey to his own desires, to his teenage mistress, and to Axel Rex, the scheming rival for her affections who finds his greatest joy in the downfall of others. Published first in Russian as Kamera Obskura in 1932, this book appeared in Nabokov's own English translation six years later. This New Directions edition, based on the text as Nabokov revised it in 1960, features a new introduction by Booker Prize-winner John Banville.
Lectures on Don Quixote
Vladimir Nabokov
A master teacher and critic as well as a novelist, Nabokov created a fastidiously shaped series of lectures based on a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the Spanish classic, recording his insights as he proceeded. Since his teaching methods relied heavily on quotation from the author under discussion, this summary consisted in part of his own narrative and in part of quotations from the Putnam translation.
Rejecting the common interpretation of Don Quixote as a warm satire, Nabokov perceives the work as a catalog of cruelty through which the gaunt knight passes, retaining both honor and innocence. Along with Lectures on Literature and Lectures on Russian Literature, this book allows the reader access to one of the truly original literary thinkers of our era as he focuses his eye on the masterworks of Western literature.
Edited and with a Preface by Fredson Bowers; photographs.
Lectures on Literature
Vladimir Nabokov
For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.
Lectures on Russian Literature
Vladimir Nabokov
The author’s observations on the great nineteenth-century Russian writers-Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. “This volume... never once fails to instruct and stimulate. This is a great Russian talking of great Russians” (Anthony Burgess). Edited and with an Introduction by Fredson Bowers; illustrations.
Letters to Vera
Vladimir Nabokov
GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014
No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer lasted longer than Vladimir Nabokov's. Véra Slonim shared his delight at the enchantment of life's trifles and literature's treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humour of any woman he had met. From their meeting in 1921, Vladimir's letters to his beloved Véra form a narrative arc that tells a forty-six year-long love story, and they are memorable in their entirety. Almost always playful, romantic, and pithy, the letters tell us much about the man and the writer; we see that Vladimir observed everything, from animals, faces, speech, and landscapes with genuine fascination.
Letters to Véra
Vladimir Nabokov
No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer is quite as beguiling as that of Vladimir Nabokov's to Vera Slonim. She shared his delight at the enchantment of life's trifles and literature's treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humor of any woman he had met. From their first encounter in 1923, Vladimir's letters to Vera chronicle a half-century-long love story, one that is playful, romantic, and memorable. At the same time, the letters reveal much about their author. We see the infectious fascination with which Vladimir observed everything--animals, people, speech, landscapes and cityscapes--and glimpse his ceaseless work on his poems, plays, stories, novels, memoirs, screenplays, and translations. This delightful volume is enhanced by twenty-one photographs, as well as facsimiles of the letters and the puzzles and drawings Vladimir often sent to Vera.
With 8 pages of photographs and 47 illustrations in text
L'occhio
Vladimir Nabokov
Questo breve romanzo – scritto dapprima in russo nel 1930 e poi in inglese nel 1965 – si fonda su una vertiginosa scommessa: raccontare come, dopo un suicidio, il pensiero umano possa continuare a vivere «per inerzia» e costruirsi un romanzo alternativo alla realtà, con la quale poi finirà per collidere. La scena è quella degli emigrati russi a Berlino, mondo fragile e illusorio, congeniale a una narrazione dove Nabokov scatena tutti i suoi estri in tema di specchi, riflessi, sdoppiamenti – come dire il terreno peculiare su cui si svilupperà la sua arte.
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.
Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.
Look at the Harlequins!
Vladimir Nabokov
Focusing on the central figures of his life--his four wives, his books, and his muse, Dementia--the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life's work and his life itself, as the worlds of reality and literary invention grow increasingly indistinguishable.
Lujin Savunması
Vladimir Nabokov
"... Nabokov'un benzersiz evrenine henüz dalmamış olanlar için, Lujin Savunması mükemmel bir giriştir."
John Updike
"... muazzam, olgun, modern bir yazar vardı karşımda, büyük bir Rus yazarı, bir anka kuşu gibi devrimin ve sürgünün ateşinden ve küllerinden doğmuştu."
Nina Berberova
".. söylemeden edemeyeceğim; bütün Rusça kitaplarım arasında en fazla 'sıcaklığa' sahip olan ve bu sıcaklığı yayan Lujin Savunması'dır."
Man From The Ussr & Other Plays: And Other Plays
Vladimir Nabokov
Four plays and two essays on drama, written during Nabokov's émigré years before his writings in English earned him worldwide fame. Translated and with Introductions by Dmitri Nabokov.
Mary
Vladimir Nabokov
Mary is a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia--Nabokov's first novel. In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin's, who, he discovers, is Mary's husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.
Maschenka
Vladimir Nabokov
Berlin in den zwanziger Jahren: In einer kleinen Pension wohnt eine Gruppe russischer Emigranten. Einer von ihnen, Lew Ganin, durchlebt in der Erinnerung noch einmal eine verlorene, leidenschaftlich zurückersehnte Liebe.
Nabokov ist einer der größten Erotiker der Literatur unseres Jahrhunderts, weil er uns alle Schattierungen und Grade der Zuneigung eines Menschen zu einem anderen sehen und spüren läßt, und dies mit ganz unauffälligen Mitteln. Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Mașenka
Vladimir Nabokov
În Maşenka, romanul de debut semnat cu pseudonimul V. Sirin, Vladimir Nabokov spune povestea lui Lev Glebovici Ganin, un emigrant rus ce-şi duce traiul într-o pensiune berlineză, unde descoperă că Maşenka, prima sa iubită demult pierdută, este de fapt soţia plicticosului său vecin, Alexei Ivanovici Alfiorov, şi că aceasta urmează să sosească în curînd la Berlin. Ganin născoceşte un întreg scenariu în aşteptarea Maşenkăi, despre care e convins că încă îl iubeşte cu înflăcărare. Romanul stă la baza unei celebre adaptări cinematografice, regizată în 1987 de John Goldschmidt, cu Cary Elwes şi Irina Brook în rolurile principale.
Mashenka
Vladimir Nabokov
Ganin, un joven exiliado ruso, sobrevive en el Berlín de entre guerras gracias a los más diversos trabajos -camarero, vendedor a domicilio, extra de cine...- mientras sueña con abandonar la ciudad y rememora su infancia y adolescencia en la añorada Rusia y su temprano romance con Mashenka, mujer deseada e idealizada, amor perdido en el pasado. Anhelante, mientras rebusca en su memoria los preciados recuerdos, Ganin rompe con su acutal novia y deja pasar el tiempo en la pensión en la que vive con otros exiliados que mantienen una peculiar relación de amor-odio con la madre patria; el viejo poeta rondado por la muerte, la romántica muchacha de los grandes pechos, los dos bailarines homosexuales y el mediocre hombre al que el protagonista conoce cuando ambos se quedan encerrados en el ascensor y que resulta ser el marido de Mashenka, que pronto irá a reunirse con él...Mashenka, primera novela de Vladimir Nabokov, es una temprana muestra de su talento y contiene ya mucho de los elementos que configuran el fascinante mundo del genial autor de Lolita, así como la admirable prosa y la desbordante capacidad fabuladora que caracterizan su producción literaria.
Natacha : et autres nouvelles
Vladimir Nabokov
Vertige du premier émoi amoureux, fin de la liaison d'un adolescent avec une femme mariée, amour terrorisé d'une femme pour son terrible mari... Perceptions, angoisses, sensations... Exhumées des archives Nabokov et publiées à partir des années 1990 dans The New Yorker, de magnifiques nouvelles à la langue envoûtante et aux sonorités lumineuses.
Nikolai Gogol
Vladimir Nabokov
The work of Gogol—one of the very greatest of Russia's literary geniuses—has become fairly well known in America but has seldom been properly understood. There have been many bad, but a few good, translations of his work available in English, and critics have often tended to put labels on him, to make him out "the Russian Dickens" or a forerunner of our own literary champions of the oppressed.
In this brilliantly recreative study, Vladimir Nabokov shows us that Gogol's comedy was not Dickensian, but biting and salty, textured throughout by a use of the irrational not duplicated by any other writer; that, in his play The Government Inspector and his great novel Dead Souls, his depiction of the frauds of bureaucracy and the vagaries of Russian serf-owners were not so much intended to work social change as to serve as a framework for portraying the fantasies of the human spirit.
Nabokov, whose own uniqueness is known through his novels Lolita and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight brings the uniqueness of Gogol to life—the strange, unhappy, self-deluding man and his singular literary methods and achievements.
Nikolai Gogol was originally published by New Direction some years ago, when Edmund Wilson called it "one of the best volumes so far in the interesting series called 'Makers of the Modern Literature'." And B.G. Guerney said in the New Republic, "The creative reader (and student) who wishes to soar on Gogol's own wingéd-steed troika will choose Nabokov as his exhilarating courier."
Novels and Memoirs 1941–1951: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight / Bend Sinister / Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov
After a brilliant literary career writing in Russian, Vladimir Nabokov immigrated to the United States in 1940 and went on to an even more brilliant one in English. Between 1939 and 1974 he wrote the autobiography and eight novels now collected by the Library of America in an authoritative three-volume set, earning a place as one of the greatest writers of America, his beloved adopted home.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, published a year after he settled in the U. S., is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of a famous author. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, this novel was published in 1941.
Bend Sinister (1947), Nabokov’s most explicitly political novel, is the haunting, dreamlike story of Adam Krug, a quiet philosophy professor caught up in the bureaucratic bungling of a totalitarian police state. “I am neither a didacticist nor an allegorizer,” Nabokov affirms in his introduction to the novel, but goes on to state: “There can be distinguished, no doubt, certain reflections in the glass caused by idiotic and despicable regimes that we all know and that have brushed against me in the course of my life: worlds of tyranny and torture, of Fascists and Bolshevists, of Philistine thinkers and jack-booted baboons.”
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1951; revised 1966), Nabokov’s dazzling memoir of his childhood in imperial Russia and exile in Europe, is central to an understanding of his art. With its balance of inner and outer worlds—of family chronicle and private fantasy, revolutions and butterflies, the games of childhood and the disasters of politics—the work that Nabokov called “a systematically correlated assemblage of personal recollections” is a haunting transmutation of life into art. “I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe…I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love,” he writes toward the end of the book, “so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.”
The texts of this volume incorporate Nabokov’s penciled corrections in his own copies of his works and correct long-standing errors. They are the most authoritative versions available and have been prepared with the assistance of Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist’s son.
O Olho
Vladimir Nabokov
Em seu quarto romance, o aclamado escritor russo Vladimir Nabokov narra a história de Smurov, um imigrante russo triste e solitário que tenta sobreviver sem dinheiro na Berlim da década de 1920. Ele consegue equilibrar as parcas finanças sendo tutor de dois meninos de uma família também russa. Entre um e outro caso amoroso, Smurov se envolve com Matilda, uma mulher casada, e ao ser descoberto e humilhado pelo marido traído, decide que o único rumo possível para sua vida é o suicídio. Porém, algo inusitado ocorre e o autor dá início a uma narrativa detetivesca, em que cabe ao leitor descobrir o que saiu errado, qual será o destino de Smurov e se ele realmente conseguiu dar fim à sua existência ou se o mundo sobrenatural é idêntico à vida terrena. O Olho é um romance que levará o leitor a observar e desvendar o que se esconde por trás da história.
O Original de Laura
Vladimir Nabokov
O autor de Lolita retoma aqui alguns dos elementos que fizeram o sucesso do seu mais célebre romance. O Dr. Philip Wild, um homem brilhante, inteligente, rico e volumoso, é frequentemente humilhado pela sua mulher - a jovem, elegante e promíscua Flora. Num romance "uma obra-prima de enlouquecer", que documenta as suas infidelidades, escrito por um dos seus amantes e dado ao doutor seu marido, ela aparece como a minha Laura. Desonrado, Wild ainda consegue encontrar prazer na vida entregando-se a uma auto-aniquilação virtual, começando por amputar os seus dedos dos pés. Ao sentir que não lhe seria possível terminar O Original de Laura, escrito num sofrimento horrível e com a perspectiva de uma morte próxima, Nabokov deu instruções para que o manuscrito fosse queimado depois da sua morte. Durante trinta anos, a mulher, e depois o filho Dmitri, debateramse com a questão de cumprir ou não a vontade do escritor. Disponível pela primeira vez, este texto - quase destruído - é acompanhado por uma introdução de Dmitri Nabokov sobre o grande livro final do seu pai e da difícil decisão de o publicar.
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov
The American poet John Shade is dead. His last poem, 'Pale Fire', is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should be.
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.
Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.
Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov
One of the best-loved of Nabokov’s novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.
Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (1989-06-18)
Vladimir Nabokov
One of the best-loved of Nabokov’s novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.
Povestirile lui Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Volumul cuprinde povestirile publicate de Vladimir Nabokov in rusa, intre anii 1920-1940, traduse de Adriana Liciu; cele scrise in rusa, unele nepublicate la vremea aceea, altele aparute doar in revistele rusesti din Berlin sau Paris, traduse in engleza de Dmitri Nabokov, fiul autorului, si reunite in volumul The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, dupa care s-a realizat traducerea in limba romana de catre Veronica D. Niculescu; si povestirile scrise in engleza si aparute in volumul Nabokov’s Dozen (cu exceptia textului Mademoiselle O, care a fost scris initial in franceza), traduse de Anca Baicoianu.
Real Life Of Sebastian Knight
Vladimir Nabokov
A perversely, magical, literary detective story about the mysterious life of the famous writer, a biography as it were, narrated by his half brother.
Revenge (Stories of Vladimir Nabokov)
Vladimir Nabokov
Rire dans la nuit
Vladimir Nabokov
Voici un roman de Vladimir Nabokov inédit en français. Mécontent de la traduction anglaise de Chambre obscure qui était la version initiale de Rire dans la nuit, Vladimir Nabokov, exilé aux Etats-Unis, décida en 1937 de se traduire lui-même. Ce défi linguistique donna une œuvre nouvelle et transformée, à "la précision absolue", évidente comme un axiome au pessimisme froid : "Il était une fois à Berlin, en Allemagne, un homme qui s'appelait Albinus. Il était riche, respectable et heureux. Un jour il abandonna sa femme pour une jeune maîtresse ; il aimait ; n'était pas aimé ; et sa vie s'acheva en catastrophe." Sous l'apparence d'un mélodrame berlinois, d'une comédie de mœurs, à trois, où l'on trompe et où l'on est trompé, Nabokov fait jouer la mécanique implacable de sa démonstration. L'amour est-il aveugle ? Oui, répond le démiurge Nabokov. La variation sur l'adultère devient alors une cruelle parodie où Gogol et Tolstoï passent comme des ombres. Le roman s'élargit en une fable intemporelle, les couleurs de la vie se fanent et se fondent bientôt dans une nuit noire sans lune. Pourtant, dans l'obscurité quelqu'un rit.
Risa en la oscuridad
Vladimir Nabokov
Albinus, un respetable crítico de arte, conoce a Margot, una mujer mucho más joven que él, que trabaja como acomodadora en un cine y sueña con ser actriz. Albinus queda prendado de sus encantos y abandona a su esposa y a su hija para fugarse con ella. Pero entonces irrumpe Axel Rex, un joven artista rebosante de talento y de cinismo, que ha sido amante de Margot. Se completa así el último vértice de un triángulo amoroso de fatídicas consecuencias.
Signs and Symbols (Stories of Vladimir Nabokov)
Vladimir Nabokov
"For the fourth time in as many years they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to bring a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind..." Signs and Symbols is a short story centering on the severe mental debility of a young man and on the struggle of his elderly parents to cope with it. It was first published in the May 15, 1948, issue of The New Yorker magazine. Before publishing the story, the editors of the magazine changed the title to "Symbols and Signs." After the story appeared, Nabokov changed the title back to its original wording.Vladimir Nabokov, also known as Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery (The study and collection of moths & butterflies), and had a big interest in chess problems. Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intricate wordplay and descriptive detail that characterized all his works.
Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov
Older cover for ISBN 9780679723394. More recent edition here.
The late Vladimir Nabokov always did things his way, and his classic autobiography is no exception. No dry recital of dates, names, and addresses for this linguistic magician--instead, Speak, Memory is a succession of lapidary episodes, in which the factoids play second fiddle to the development of Nabokov's sensibility. There is, to be sure, an impressionistic whirl through the author's family history (including a gallery of Tartar princes and fin-de-siècle oddities). And Nabokov's account of his tenure at St. Petersburg's famous Tenishev School--where he counted Osip Mandelstam among his schoolmates--offers a lovely glimpse into the heart of Russia's silver age. Still, Nabokov is much too artful an autobiographer to present Speak, Memory as a slice of reality--a word, by the way, that he insisted must always be surrounded by quotation marks.
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
Vladimir Nabokov
An edition for this ISBN with an older cover may be found here.
'Speak, memory', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography, which is itself a work of art.
Strong Opinions
Vladimir Nabokov
In this collection of interviews, articles, and editorials, Vladimir Nabokov ranges over his life, art, education, politics, literature, movies, and modern times, among other subjects. Strong Opinions offers his trenchant, witty, and always engaging views on everything from the Russian Revolution to the correct pronunciation of Lolita.
Terra Incognita
Vladimir Nabokov
These three stories of menace, magic and melancholy display Vladimir Nabokov's astonishing range and inventiveness. Whether describing an escape across a surreal tropical landscape, a fateful meeting or an unexpected - and threatening - return, each tale shows his dazzling sleight of hand, intellectual playfulness and fantastical imagination.
This book includes Terra Incognita, Spring in Fialta and The Doorbell.
Terror
Vladimir Nabokov
The Annotated Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Revised and Updated
The Annotated Lolita is the definitive annotated text of the modern classic, written by one of the most punning and allusive writers in English since James Joyce. It assiduously glosses Lolita's extravagant wordplay and its frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross references.
--back cover
The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
Vladimir Nabokov
The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Defense
Vladimir Nabokov
A chilling story of obsession and madness. Luzhin, a distracted, withdrawn boy, takes up chess as a refuge from everyday life. As he rises to grandmaster, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality as he moves inexorably towards madness.
The Enchanter
Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov described this novella, written in Paris in 1939 but only published twenty years later, as 'the first little throb of Lolita'. The plot is similar: a middle-aged man wedding an unattractive widow in order to indulge his paedophilic obsession with her daughter.
However, The Enchanter has an utterly different atmosphere, as time, place and even names remain a mystery. Nabokov transforms his protagonist's attempts to lull his twelve-year-old step-daughter into a state of 'enchantment' into a graceful, chilling fairytale.
The Eye
Vladimir Nabokov
The action of the novel largely begins after the attempted (perhaps successful) suicide of the protagonist. This occurs after he suffers a beating at the hands of a cuckolded husband. After his supposed death, and assuming everything in the world around him to be a manifestation of his 'leftover' imagination, his "eye" observes a group of Russian émigrés as he tries to ascertain their opinions of the character Smurov, around whom much uncertainty and suspicion exists.
The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov (1990-09-05)
Vladimir Nabokov
The action of the novel largely begins after the attempted (perhaps successful) suicide of the protagonist. This occurs after he suffers a beating at the hands of a cuckolded husband. After his supposed death, and assuming everything in the world around him to be a manifestation of his 'leftover' imagination, his "eye" observes a group of Russian émigrés as he tries to ascertain their opinions of the character Smurov, around whom much uncertainty and suspicion exists.
The Gift
Vladimir Nabokov
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--a book very much like The Gift itself.
The Luzhin Defense
Vladimir Nabokov
A chilling story of obsession and madness. Luzhin, a distracted, withdrawn boy, takes up chess as a refuge from everyday life. As he rises to the heights of grandmaster, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality as he moves inexorably towards madness.
The Original of Laura
Vladimir Nabokov
When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, "The Original of Laura." But Nabokov's wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband's last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five the Russian novelist's only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father's wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality affords us one last experience of Nabokov's magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work. "Photos of the handwritten index cards accompany the text. They are perforated and can be removed and rearranged, as the author likely did when he was writing the novel. ""
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Vladimir Nabokov
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story - subtle, intricate, leading to a tantalizing climax - about the mysterious life of a famous writer. Many people knew things about Sebastian Knight as a distinguished novelist, but probably fewer than a dozen knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career, the second one in such a disastrous way. After Knight's death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with a few scanty clues in the novelist's private papers. His search proves to be a story of mystery and intrigue as any of his subject's own novels, as baffling, and, in the end, as uniquely rewarding.
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories.
Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales—eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time—display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination. They range from sprightly fables to bittersweet tales of loss, from claustrophobic exercises in horror to a connoisseur's samplings of the table of human folly. Read as a whole, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov offers an intoxicating draft of the master's genius, his devious wit, and his ability to turn language into an instrument of ecstasy.
The Wood-Sprite
Russian Spoken Here
Sounds
Wingstroke
Gods
A Matter of Chance
The Seaport
Revenge
Beneficence
Details of A Sunset
The Thunderstorm
La Veneziana
Bachmann
The Dragon
Christmas
A Letter That Never Reached Russia
The Fight
The Return of Chorb
A Guide to Berlin
A Nursery Tale
Terror
Razor
The Passenger
The Doorbell
An Affair of Honor
The Christmas Story
The Potato Elf
The Aurelian
A Dashing Fellow
A Bad Day
The Visit to the Museum
A Busy Man
Terra Incognita
The Reunion
Lips to Lips
Orache
Music
Perfection
The Admiralty Spire
The Leonardo
In Memory of L.I. Shigaev
The Circle
A Russian Beauty
Breaking the News
Torpid Smoke
Recruiting
A Slice of Life
Spring in Fialta
Cloud, Castle, Lake
Tyrants Destroyed
Lik
Mademoiselle O
Vasiliy Shishkov
Ultima Thule
Solus Rex
The Assistant Producer
That in Aleppo Once
A Forgotten Poet
Time and Ebb
Conversation Piece, 1945
Signs and Symbols
First Love
Scenes From the Life of A Double Monster
The Vane Sisters
Lance
The Tragedy of Mister Morn
Vladimir Nabokov
Morn, a masked king, rules over a realm to which he has restored order after a violent revolution. Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed bloodshed and disaster when Midia's husband returns, provoking a duel and the return of chaos that Morn has fought so hard to prevent.
The first major work and the only play of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pnin, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is translated and published in English here for the first time, and is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy.
The Waltz Invention
Vladimir Nabokov
Mr. Nabokov tells us in "The Waltz Invention" that our salvation today rests on a perfect understanding of the human heart. "The Waltz Invention," written when only a handful of scientists were concerned with atomic possibilities, could have been read as a puzzling, incredible fantasy in those days, but of course today a man like Waltz is at the center of our nightmares. We had better have a realistic understanding especially of a tyrant's heart in our fissionable age, MR. Nabokov says. Salvator Waltz is in possession of an infernal machine. He can operate it at will; and the machine is hidden away from all eye in the symbolical country of which Waltz is a citizen. With the same intricate levels of brilliancy as Vladimir Nabokov's other world acclaimed tales, "The Waltz Invention" write in a play form in 1938, is a classic tragedy and a comedy.
Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
Vladimir Nabokov
A rich compilation of the previously uncollected Russian and English prose and interviews of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, edited by Nabokov experts Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy.
"I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child: so Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote in the introduction to his volume of selected prose, Strong Opinions. Think, Write, Speak follows up where that volume left off, with a rich compilation of his uncollected prose and interviews, from a 1921 essay about Cambridge to two final interviews in 1977. The chronological order allows us to watch the Cambridge student and the fledgling Berlin reviewer and poet turn into the acclaimed Paris émigré novelist whose stature brought him to teach in America, where his international success exploded with Lolita and propelled him back to Europe. Whether his subject is Proust or Pushkin, the sport of boxing or the privileges of democracy, Nabokov's supreme individuality, his keen wit, and his alertness to the details of life illuminate the page.
Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor (Penguin Modern Classics)
Vladimir Nabokov
'Masterly, hilarious, truly insightful' - Philip Hensher, The Spectator A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2019 The last major collection of Nabokov's published material, Think, Write, Speak brings together a treasure trove of previously uncollected texts from across the author's extraordinary career. Each phase of his wandering life is included, from a precocious essay written while still at Cambridge in 1921, through his fame in the aftermath of the publication of Lolita to the final, fascinating interviews given shortly before his death in 1977. Introduced and edited by his biographer Brian Boyd, this is an essential work for anyone who has been drawn into Nabokov's literary orbit. Here he is at his most inspirational, curious, playful, misleading and caustic. The seriousness of his aesthetic credo, his passion for great writing and his mix of delight and dismay at his own, sudden global fame in the 1950s are all brilliantly delineated.
Transparent Things
Vladimir Nabokov
"Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero - sullen, gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland... As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride... Eight years later - following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment - Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past... The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects." Martin Amis
Ultima Thule
Vladimir Nabokov
Дар (сборник)
Vladimir Nabokov
В однотомник произведений мастера слова В.Набокова, на творчество которого оказали влияние сразу две великих культуры - русская и англоязычная, вошли три романа "Машенька", "Защита Лужина" и "Дар".
© 2024 Pagebound