New Releases by Vladimir Nabokov

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. The novel chronicles Humbert''s obsession with Lolita and his manipulative and ultimately abusive relationship with her as they travel across the United States. Nabokov''s writing in "Lolita" is characterized by its lyrical prose, intricate wordplay, and dark humor, which serves to both captivate and unsettle the reader. Despite its disturbing subject matter, "Lolita" is celebrated for its literary brilliance and has been praised for its exploration of themes such as desire, obsession, and the corruption of innocence. Nabokov challenges readers to confront their own moral judgments and perceptions of love and sexuality through Humbert''s unreliable narration. "Lolita" has sparked intense debate and controversy since its publication due to its portrayal of taboo subjects, including pedophilia. However, it''s also widely regarded as a masterpiece of literature and continues to be studied and analyzed for its complex narrative structure and psychological depth.

The acclaimed author of Lolita offers unique insight into works by James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Jane Austen, and others—with an introduction by John Updike. In the 1940s, when Vladimir Nabokov first embarked on his academic career in the United States, he brought with him hundreds of original lectures on the authors he most admired. For two decades those lectures served as the basis for Nabokov''s teaching, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, as he introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. This volume collects Nabokov''s famous lectures on Western European literature, with analysis and commentary on Charles Dickens''s Bleak House, Gustav Flaubert''s Madam Bovary, Marcel Proust''s The Walk by Swann''s Place, Robert Louis Stevenson''s "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and other works. This volume also includes photographic reproductions of Nabokov''s original notes, revealing his own edits, underlined passages, and more. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers Introduction by John Updike

In some of these stories shadowy people pass through, cooped up by life, mangled by it, with nowhere to escape to. Their dreams lie stifled, smothered by routine and repetition, and frustrations lurk in all the corners. In others, elusive glimpses of fleeting happiness, which flutter away before they can be snatched, waylay their victims. Like the shimmer of the sea, the gleam of a glass caught by the sun, they sparkle brilliantly only to dissolve again. Two of the stories, ''First Love'' and ''Mademoiselle O'', are autobiographical, and ''The Assistant Producer'' is based on real events, but the rest are pure flights of fantasy - or the stuff that life is weaved of?

Nikolai Gogol was the most idiosyncratic of the great Russian novelists of the 19th century and lived a tragically short life which was as chaotic as the lives of the characters he created. This biography begins with Gogol''s death and ends with his birth, an inverted structure typical of both Gogol and Nabokov. The biographer proceeds to establish the relationship between Gogol and his novels, especially with regard to "nose-consciousness", a peculiar feature of Russian life and letters, which finds its apotheosis in Gogol''s own life and prose. There are more expressions and proverbs concerning the nose in Russian than in any other language in the world. Nabokov''s style in this biography is comic, but as always leads to serious issues—in this case, an appreciation of the distinctive "sense of the physical" inherent in Gogol''s work. Nabokov describes how Gogol''s life and literature mingled, and explains the structure and style of Gogol''s prose in terms of the novelist''s life.

After multiple postings in various armies, Nikolay Galatov, an itinerant soldier, is living in Berlin. Every now and then he remembers Olga Kind, a woman he left behind in St. Petersburg seven years ago. He decides to go and find her. Filled with teasing plot lines, misrepresentations and narrative traps, The Doorbell is an exploration of character, interaction and awkward suspense. Once again examining the themes of loss, separation and exile, Vladimir Nabokov weaves a tale of unexpected turnings and non-happenings, playing with the conventions of traditional, predictable fiction.

Early dramatic works—plus two essays—by the author of Lolita and Pale Fire. Including The Man from the USSR, The Event, The Pole, and The Grand-dad, this volume collects works for the theater written during Vladimir Nabokov''s émigré years, before his writings in English earned him worldwide fame and made him a seven-time National Book Award finalist. Also included are two of his essays on drama: "Playwriting" and "The Tragedy of Tragedy." Translated and with introductions by Dmitri Nabokov, this collection offers a fascinating glimpse into the work of the novelist, one of the twentieth century''s acknowledged literary geniuses.

Though we know Vladimir Nabokov as a brilliant novelist, his first love was poetry. This landmark collection brings together the best of his verse, including many pieces that have never before appeared in English. These poems span the whole of Nabokov’s career, from the newly discovered “Music,” written in 1914, to the short, playful “To Véra,” composed in 1974. Many are newly translated by Dmitri Nabokov, including The University Poem, a sparkling novel in verse modeled on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin that constitutes a significant new addition to Nabokov’s oeuvre. Included too are such poems as “Lilith”, an early work which broaches the taboo theme revisited nearly forty years later in Lolita, and “An Evening of Russian Poetry”, a masterpiece in which Nabokov movingly mourns his lost language in the guise of a versified lecture on Russian delivered to college girls. The subjects range from the Russian Revolution to the American refrigerator, taking in on the way motel rooms, butterflies, ice-skating, love, desire, exile, loneliness, language, and poetry itself; and the poet whirls swiftly between the brilliantly painted facets of his genius, wearing masks that are, by turns, tender, demonic, sincere, self-parodying, shamanic, visionary, and ingeniously domestic.

''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.

Considered by many to be the greatest Russian novel of the twentieth century. • An interweaving of the effects of life and memory, tradition and heritage, upon art, the book tells of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished poet seeking fame in the phantasmic world of Berlin in the 1920s. "A fascinating lesson in the truly staggering number of possible ways of writing and seeing." -Kirkus Reviews The Gift is the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdynstev, a writer living in the closed world of Russian intellectuals in Berlin shortly after the First World War. This gorgeous tapestry of literature follows the pursuits of an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write. The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of the initial period of his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others.

The darkly comic Transparent Things, one of Nabokov''s final books, traces the bleak life of Hugh Person through murder, madness, prison and trips to Switzerland. One of these was the last journey his father ever took; on another, having been sent to ingratiate himself with a distinguished novelist, he met his future wife. "As casual, as unpredictable, as eccentric and as daunting as Mr. Nabokov''s genius." -Mavis Gallant, The New York Times Book Review Nabokov''s brilliant short novel sinks into the transparent things of the world that surround this one person, to the silent histories they carry. Remarkable even in Nabokov''s work for its depth and lyricism, Transparent Things is a small, experimental marvel of memories and dreams, both sentimental and malign. “The final effect is both chill and comic, the transparencies both beautiful and terrifying.” —The Times (London)

Nabokov''s third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost: in Luzhin'' s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent''s unexpected and unpredictabke lines of assault.

A farcical detective story and a profoundly refractive tale about a Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife. • A wonderfully layered exploration of the vicissitudes of identity, appearance, and the loss of self. Smurov, a lovelorn and excruciatingly self-conscious Russian tutor, shoots himself after a beating by his mistress'' husband. Unsure whether his suicide has been successful or not, Smurov drifts around Berlin, observing his acquaintances, but finds he can discover very little about his own life from the opinions of his distracted, confused fellow-émigrés.

One of the best-loved of Nabokov’s novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. 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. “Fun and satire are just the beginning of the rewards of this novel. Generous, bewildered Pnin, that most kindly and impractical of men, wins our affection and respect.” —Chicago Tribune 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 misunder-standings, 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.

In this collection of interviews, articles, and editorials, 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.

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 last 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 cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed, he simply wills his executioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.

Lolita, la más famosa y controversial novela de Vladimir Nabokov, cuenta la historia de la obsesión devoradora del cuarentón Humbert Humbert por la nínfula Dolores Haze. Ternura y fascinación —además de tristeza y un humor mordaz— llenan sus páginas pero es, por encima de todo, una meditación sobre el amor—el amor como abuso y alucinación, locura y transformación.

Novelist, poet, critic, translator, and, above all, a peerless imaginer, Vladimir Nabokov was arguably the most dazzling prose stylist of the twentieth century. In novels like Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, he turned language into an instrument of ecstasy. Vintage Nabokov includes sections 1-10 of his most famous and controversial novel, Lolita; the stories “The Return of Chorb,” “The Aurelian,” “A Forgotten Poet,” “Time and Ebb,” “Signs and Symbols,” “The Vane Sisters,” and “Lance”; and chapter 12 from his memoir Speak, Memory. Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the greatest modern writers. "It was Nabokov’s gift to bring paradise wherever he alighted.” —John Updike, The New York Review of Books

"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 masterpiece 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."

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 and intoxicating draft of the master''s genius, his devious wit, and his ability to turn language into an instrument of ecstasy.

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 as intriguing as any of his subject''s own novels, as baffling, and, in the end, as uniquely rewarding. "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -John Updike

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.

The precursor to Nabokov''s classic novel, Lolita. • A middle-aged man weds an unattractive widow in order to indulge his obsession with her daughter. • "A gem to be appreciated by any admirer of the most graceful and provocative literary craftsman." —Chicago Tribune The unnamed protagonist of the story is, outwardly, a respectable and comfortable man; inside, he churns at the pubescent femininity of certain girls. Rare girls – one in a thousand – whose coltish grace and subconscious flirtatiousness betray, to his obsessed mind, a very special bud on the moist verge of its bloom. Sitting on a park bench one day, he is tantalized by the fleeting form of just such a girl roller-skating on a gravel path. His desire to be near this beauty burns in him and drives him to begin a courtship of the child’s pitiful mother – a course that can end only in the disintegration of his life. Over the years, the idea of The Enchanter grew; it changed; it developed “claws and wings.” By 1953 it was ready to furnish the basic theme of Lolita. "The Enchanter is entertaining independent of its Lolita connection. It is arch, delicious and beautifully written." —Publishers Weekly

A dying man cautiously unravels the mysteries of memory and creation. Vadim is a Russian émigré who, like Nabokov, is a novelist, poet and critic. There are threads linking the fictional hero with his creator as he reconstructs the images of his past from young love to his serious illness. • "Good farce throbbing with his well-known obsessions." -V.S. Pritchett, The New York Review ''Look at the harlequins ... Play! Invent the world! Invent reality''. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US. Now dying, he reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist, and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre illness, ''numerical nimbus syndrome''.

A love triangle, where two of the members attempt to murder the third. • King, Queen, Knave, like all Nabokov’s writing, bears the unmistakable stamp of his genius – brilliant, erotic, deliciously macabre, and wholly unique. “Fascinating…audacious and delightful.” – The New York Times The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men''s clothing emporium store. 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. “A simply overflowing sense of life.” – Life Magazine “A treat, a feast, the splendid work of a conscious and gifted artist.” – Book Week

A darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue from one of the leading writers of the twentieth century, the acclaimed author of Lolita. "Half-poem, half-prose...a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. One of the great works of art of this century." —Mary McCarthy, New York Times bestselling author of The Group 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, Vladimir Nabokov''s witty novel achieves that rarest of things in literature—perfect tragicomic balance.