Most Popular Books by Vladimir Nabokov

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.

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.

From one of the 20th century''s great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman''s Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously unpublished \"Chapter 16\"–the most significant unpublished piece of writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate–which provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory. Nabokov''s memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

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.

Nabokov''s wise, ironic, and elegant masterpiece. • A controversial love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. • This annotated edition 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. \"Fascinatingly detailed.\" -Edmund Morris, The New York Times Book Review When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert''s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

From one of the greatest prose stylists of our time,his complete short stories, including 13 hitherto unpublished,brought toghether for the first time.

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

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)

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.

Nabokov''s fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Nabokov''s protagonist, Smurov, is a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious 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.

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.

Here, for the first time, are 65 stories--13 of which have never before been published in book form--by one of the 20th century''s great prose stylists collected in one elegant volume. Written from the early 1920s to the mid-1950s, these stories will remind readers that they are in the company of a great original, a literary master. Edited by his son and translator.

\"Nabokov''s last metafictive parable. . . . One of the most interesting short stories Nabokov never wrote.\" —San Francisco Chronicle When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 hand-written 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’s 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. “Bits and pieces of Laura will beckon and beguile Nabokov fans, who will find many of the author’s perennial themes and obsessions percolating through the story of Philip.... In these pages readers will find bright flashes of Nabokovian wordplay and surreal, Magritte-like descriptions.\" —The New York Times \"A unique chance to see the master out of control. . . . It''s like seeing an unfinished Michelangelo sculpture--one of those rough, half-formed giants straining to step out of its marble block. It''s even more powerful, to a different part of the brain, than the polish of a David or a Lolita.\" —New York magazine

This story of a man''s lifelong entanglement with his sister is not only a love story; it manages also to be a fairy tale, an epic, a philosophical treatise on the nature of time, a parody of the history of the novel, and an erotic catalogue. It concludes with an ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom. Ada, or Ardor, published just after Nabokov''s seventieth birthday, is the supreme work of a virtuosic imagination at white heat. Nabokov is the most allusive and linguistically playful writer in English since Joyce, and like \\"Pale Fire\\" and \\"Lolita,\\" his new novel abounds in delightful minor parodies and pastiches, countless multilingual puns and literary jokes. Ada or Ardor is at its core a love story, the stuff that''s sold reams of pop music, and piles of books. Van, fourteen, falls in love with twelve-year-old Ada during a summer vacation. This premise is possibly the only aspect of Ada or Ardor common to numerous other novels. Van, an unreliable narrator if there ever was one, tells the story, while the narrative shuttles seamlessly from a first person to a third person - trust Nabokov the Enchanter to achieve that trick.

The wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder. • “A beautiful mystery plot, not to be revealed.” – Newsweek “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” – John Updike “One of Mr. Nabokov’s finest, most challenging and provocative novels.” – The New York Times Despair’s protagonist, Hermann, is another masterly portrait in the fascinating gallery of living characters Vladmir Nabokov has given to world literature. In his pseudo wordliness, his odd genius, Hermann is one with such other heteroclitic neurotic Nabokovian creations as Humbert Humbert and Charles Kimbote. Rapt in his own reality, incapable of escaping or explicating it, he is as solitary in his abyss as Luzhin or Charlotte Haze of Lolita. Despair is illuminated throughout by the virtuosity and cunning wit that are Vladimir Nabokov’s hallmarks.