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