At the outbreak of the Second World War Vladimir Nabokov stood on the brink of losing everything all over again. The reputation he had built as the pre-eminent Russian novelist in exile was imperilled. In Nabokov and his Books, Duncan White shows how Nabokov went to America and not only reinvented himself as an American writer but also used the success of Lolita to rescue those Russian books that had been threatened by obscurity.
This volume was conceived as a kind of encyclopedia in which many of the world’s recognized experts on Vladimir Nabokov, as well as specialists on other topics who could view him from a fresh or usefully provocative perspective, would provide concise analyses of his varied and extensive legacy. Although the genre of “editor’s introduction” often dictates some attempt to justify the appearance of the book to which it is attached, no such gesture will be found here.
A startling and revelatory examination of Nabokov’s life and works—notably Pale Fire and Lolita—bringing new insight into one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic authors. Novelist Vladimir Nabokov witnessed the horrors of his century, escaping Revolutionary Russia then Germany under Hitler, and fleeing France with his Jewish wife and son just weeks before Paris fell to the Nazis. He repeatedly faced accusations of turning a blind eye to human suffering to write artful tales of depravity.
This is typical brilliant Nabokov, with plenty of detail and mysterious threads laid down throughout that the imaginative can choose to follow or ignore. Because it was written in English rather than translated, Nabokov's prose is at its most powerful and organic - by far. The stories in this are extremely haunting, musing on the nature of life after death, among many other themes. It is true genius and you can read it in a single sitting. Get it. You won't be disappointed.
humorous, and insightful, Readings is a collection of classic essays and reviews by Michael Dirda, book critic of the Washington Post and winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. From a first reading of Beckett and Faulkner at the feet of an inspirational high-school English teacher to a meeting of the P. G. Wodehouse Society, from an obsession with Nabokov's Lolita to the discovery of the Japanese epic The Tale of Genji, these essays chronicle a lifetime of literary enjoyment.
