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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

In Pale Fire Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shade's self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.

'The woods were gradually thinning. I was tormented by strange hallucinations.I gazed at the weird tree trunks, around some of which were coiled thick, flesh-coloured snakes; suddenly I thought I saw, between the trunks, as though through my fingers, the mirror of a half-open wardrobe...'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.

Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the greatest modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions. “It was Nabokov’s gift to bring paradise wherever he alighted.” —John Updike, The New York Review of BooksNovelist, 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.

"In general "Glory" is my happiest thing". "The fun of "Glory" is ...to be sought in the echoing and linking of minor events, in back-and-forth switches, which produce an illusion of impetus; in an old daydream directly becoming the blessing of the ball hugged to one's chest, or in the casual vision of Martin's mother grieving beyond the time-frame of the novel in an abstraction of the future that the reader can only guess at, even after he has raced through the last seven chapters where a regular madness of structural twists and a masquerade of all characters culminate in a furious finale, although nothing much happens at the very end - just a bird perching on a wicket in the greyness of a wet day". (Vladimir Nabokov).ReviewHe did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language. Anthony Burgess Nabokov can move you to laughter in the way that masters can - to laughter that is near to tears. The GuardianAbout the AuthorVladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was one of the great writers of the twentieth century, as well as a translator and lepidopterist. His works include, from the Russian novels, The Luzhin Defense and The Gift; from the English novels, Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire and Ada; the autobiographical Speak, Memory; translations of Alice in Wonderland into Russian and Eugene Onegin into English; and lectures on literature. All of the fiction and Speak, Memory are published in Penguin.

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.

For the first time in English, Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest major work, written when he was only twenty-four: his only full-length play, introduced by Thomas Karshan and beautifully translated by Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy. The Tragedy of Mister Morn was written in the winter of 1923­­–1924, when Nabokov was completely unknown. The five-act play—the story of an incognito king whose love for the wife of a banished revolutionary brings on the chaos the king has fought to prevent—was never published in Nabokov’s lifetime and lay in manuscript until it appeared in a Russian literary journal in 1997. It is an astonishingly precocious work, in exquisite verse, touching for the first time on what would become this great writer’s major themes: intense sexual desire and jealousy, the elusiveness of happiness, the power of the imagination, and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy. The play is Nabokov’s major response to the Russian Revolution, which he had lived through, but it approaches the events of 1917 above all through the prism of Shakespearean tragedy. Review FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem

A dying man cautiously unravels the mysteries of memory and creation. Vadim is a Russian emigre 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.Review'He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language' About the AuthorOne of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

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.

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.From the Trade Paperback edition.

For the first time in English, Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest major work, written when he was only twenty-four: his only full-length play, introduced by Thomas Karshan and beautifully translated by Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy.The Tragedy of Mister Morn was written in the winter of 1923­­–1924, when Nabokov was completely unknown. The five-act play—the story of an incognito king whose love for the wife of a banished revolutionary brings on the chaos the king has fought to prevent—was never published in Nabokov’s lifetime and lay in manuscript until it appeared in a Russian literary journal in 1997. It is an astonishingly precocious work, in exquisite verse, touching for the first time on what would become this great writer’s major themes: intense sexual desire and jealousy, the elusiveness of happiness, the power of the imagination, and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy. The play is Nabokov’s major response to the Russian Revolution, which he had lived through, but it approaches the events of 1917 above all through the prism of Shakespearean tragedy.ReviewThe variety, force and richness of Nabokov's perceptions have not even the palest rival in modern fiction. To read him in full flight is to experience stimulation that is at once intellectual, imaginative and aesthetic, the nearest thing to pure sensual pleasure that prose can offer -- Martin Amis He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language -- Anthony Burgess The power of the imagination is not apt soon to find another champion of such vigour -- John Updike About the AuthorVladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for the United States, where he wrote some of his greatest works––Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)––and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.Thomas Karshan is the author of Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play and editor of Nabokov’s Selected Poems.  Previously a research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and Queen Mary, University of London, he is now a lecturer in literature at the University of East Anglia. Anastasia Tolstoy is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford, where she is writing a thesis on Nabokov. She is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy.