Its not the book, and its not the film. So what is it? Its the screenplay of course! Chances are, if you are reading this, its either because you saw the film and liked it; a fan of Stanley Kubrick: director of the film; or you read the book Lolita and the Annotated Lolita and figured "I might as well read the script;" or just a big fan of Nabokov and its the one book you dont have in your collection. Whatever the reason may be, it falls between the book and the film. This is Nabokov's version of the script that was cut, recut and then edited by Kubrick (incidentally, Nabokov still recieved on-screen credit for the screenplay). It may hold water on its own, but in comparison to either the book or film it cannot stay afloat.

By his own account, only about 20% of Nabokov's 213 page screenplay ended up in Kubrick's film. Even so, the author's opinion of Kubrick's end product was high, and the screenplay itself is a fine cinematic representation of the novel.

Lolita: a Screenplay is recommended reading for anyone who loved the novel and appreciates Nabokov's wonderful sense of humor. The story goes that Nabokov presented his screenplay to Kubrick, who told him, "Look, regardless of how brilliant it may or may not be, it would take eight hours to film." So it's unfilmable; if Borges can write literary criticism about books which don't exist, surely it's not so radical to devise screenplays which are never meant to be filmed. Nabokov adds much to his existing work, including a psychiatrist who speaks directly to the camera and a cameo for himself. One wishes that Adrian Lyne had added a few of the humorous elements of the screenplay to his film, which is fine but perhaps a bit too reverent which it should be audaciously funny. All in all, I highly recommend picking up what amounts to one of the 20th century's great geniuses playing hooky.

Nabokov and Pushkin are among my favorite authors, both having an excellent command of the language, the media, and the art. But Nabokov's Pushkin is too literal to be any good. James Falen's trans. is far superior, perhaps the best, and it's worth while to read the very best Pushkin. Ironically, Nabokov was fretted that anyone other than his son would ever translate his words; I think Pushkin would have felt the same if he saw Nabokov's translation of his masterpiece. Falen, while also literal, also is metered and rhymes. Nabokov's thuds. Read Nabokov's great novels (Pnin, Lolita, King Queen & Knave, Bend Sinister, Invitation to a Beheading, Despair, etc.) but leave Pushkin to Falen, not Nabokov.

I'm a Russian Language and Literature major in Yonsei Univ. in Korea. Having lived in Moscow for around 3 years, I'd heard there a lot about Pushkin and read many of his famous works. The most prestigious of his, however, must be "Onegin." It's a great mixture of verse and prose in its form. If possible, try to read this in Russian, as well. This long poetical prose was written for 8 years and the ending rhyme perfectly matches for the entire line until the very end. Compared to others, it is definitely a conspicuous and brilliant one. "Onegin" can be the author himself or yourself. The love between Onegin and TaTyana is neither the cheap kind of love that often appears in any books nor the tragic one that is intended to squeze your tears. As a literature, this book covers not only love between passionate youth, but also a large range of literary works in it, which can tell us about the contemporary literature current and its atmosphere. Calling Onegin "My friend", Pushkin, the author, shows the probability and likelihood of the work. Finally, I'm just sorry that the title has been changed into English. The original name must be "Yevgeni Onegin(¬¦¬Ó¬Ô¬Ö¬ß¬Ú¬Û ¬°¬ß¬Ö¬Ô¬Ú¬ß)." If you are a literature major or intersted in it, I'd like to recommand you read this. You can't help but loving the two lovers and may reread it, especially the two correspondences through a long period of time. Only with readng this book, you'll also learn a huge area of the contemporary literature of the 19th century from the books mentioned in "Onegin" that take part as its subtext. Enjoy yourself!

I'm so happy that I'm Russian and I could read this masterpiece in original language. This is one of the best Russian books ever written, and it is the example of all-time classics. Evgeniy Onegin is so extremely well-written, so original, so interesting, so intelligent. If you want to understand Russian people, you should live in Russia for years. But if you want just to approach to understanding them read some Russian literature. Your first authors may be Tolstoy or Dostoyevskiy, but I should recommend reading Pushkin at first because he is the most Russian of all Russian writers.

The only thing that may make your reading not so great is the fact that you will read it in translation. I have never read any but I think that if you like (or dislike) one of them you should try some others.

I know that Nabokov didn't translate it using the verses (and Pushkin's verses are so great), but I think it is the most punctual one. So maybe you should try to read exactly it (especially if you have already read some not so punctual translation but in verse form).

Anyway Evgeniy Onegin is one of the greatest books ever written!!!

Perhaps regrettably obscured behind Nabokov's famous novels and even his Lectures on Russian Literature and his controversial work on Eugene Onegin lies this short critical biography of Nikolai Gogol. The main thrust of the book is to portray Gogol as a masterful, if troubled and inconsistent, writer whose work is valuable not at all for its portrayal of Russia or for any seeming advocacy of social change, but rather exclusively for its artistic merit. Nabokov takes us rather briskly through Gogol's youth and his earlier works; provides detailed, quote-filled discussions of The Inspector General and the first volume of Dead Souls; summarizes the last ten years of Gogol's life, during which he attempted to write the second volume of Dead Souls but saw his artistic creativity fading; and gives a short exposition of Gogol's most famous short story, "The Overcoat."

Nabokov's essays on The Inspector General, Dead Souls, and "The Overcoat" are all quite illuminating and entertaining. He escorts us through each work, discussing the numerous ways in which each innovatively reflects Gogol's unique and charming quirks, and including, with annotations, numerous passages (each translated by Nabokov himself) which demonstrate Gogol's excellent prose. His emphasis is not at all on the plots of the works (which he only grudgingly included at the end of the book at the request of his publisher) but rather on their style, which he successfully shows to be a much more fundamental aspect of Gogol's works than any satire that one may choose to read in to them.

At times, though, it seems that Nabokov gets a little too caught up in his own dogma. Most critics nowadays would agree with Nabokov that Gogol was much more important as an artist than as a social commentator, but it's pushing it awfully far to say, as Nabokov does, that Dead Souls is no more authentically a tale about Russia than Hamlet is authentically about Denmark. Also, Nabokov confines almost all of his attention to just three works, which put together, if memory serves, wouldn't come to much more than 300 pages. He dismisses Gogol's numerous Ukrainian tales (the last of which were written when Gogol was 25; The Inspector General, by contrast, was written at the ripe old age of 26) as "juvenilia" which are emphatically not "the real Gogol," and pays little more than lip service to any of Gogol's other acclaimed short stories. The one other slightly irritating aspect of Nabokov's book that I can think of is that in the long passages that he quotes he insists on interjecting his own comments [in brackets] mid-sentence, thus ruining the flow of the prose that he took the trouble of translating so very well.

But these are all minor quibbles, and I hope you won't let them discourage you. Nabokov makes his point very entertainingly and very well, and although it might have been nice if he'd broadened his study to more of Gogol's work, his discussions of Gogol's three most important works are really excellent. Since it would be hard for me to think of a 20th-century author more suited to writing about Gogol than Nabokov, I had high expectations for this book, and I was not at all disappointed.

In this short, witty book about Nikolai Gogol, Nabokov captures perfectly the most important aspect of his writing: the dreamlike, irrational, surrealistic absurdity. My favorite book of all time is Gogol's "Dead Souls" (translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew, Signet Classics). Nabokov's book is a perfect tribute to Gogol. I haven't even read "The Inspector-General"- now I'm going to. At the time Nabokov wrote this book, there apparently weren't good English translations of "Dead Souls" so there is a somewhat pessimistic or despondent feeling that an English-speaker wouldn't be able to access Gogol. I don't speak Russian, so I can't vouch for this translation, but I have a feeling it would be all right with Nabokov. Anyway, this is a wonderful book.

Reading through this book gives excellent insight into one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century. The letters are arranged in chronological order, so reading through them gives a perspective on Lewis' life that I found to be better than any biography. This is a very enjoyable collection, and if you are a fan of C.S. Lewis: Read these letters and get inside this great philosopher's mind!

This is fine reading for the tired hours of the day. The little biography by his brother Warren is first rate, and the letters themselves are windows looking into the garden of C.S. Lewis' life and thought. They are varied, usually insightful or edifying, sometimes splendid. This edition, edited and enlarged by Walter Hooper, includes a few marvelous additions but also what appear to be some errors in the text, especially in the (fortunately rare) bits of Greek. Let's hope that the Collected Letters (published by Fount in the UK and apparently available through UK) will become available in the USA.

While standard biographies are the medium people often turn to to find out more about someone, the letters an author pens often more revealing. I thoroughly enjoyed this (much needed) updated version of the letters of C.S. Lewis from 1916 - 1963 to his various correspondents. They are at various times funny, full of good advice, intentional nonsense, great learning, wit, homely (talking about the every day events that go on in life), and all in all intensely interesting. In addition to this fine volume, you might want to try his volume of Letters to Arthur Greeves (originally published as They Stand Together), C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, or The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis. They are all quite good.

This is a pretty good collection of Interviews with Nabokov and Nabokov's letters to editors and stuff like that. For people who want to find out more there's the comprehensive two volume biography of Nabokov by Brian Boyd.

Nabokov's opinions in a nutshell?

Thought everything written by James Joyce was completely mediocre except for "Ulysses," which towered above the rest of his ouvre as one of the supreme literary masterpieces of the 20th century. Loved Flaubert and Proust and Chateaubriand, did not like Stendhal (simple and full of cliches) or Balzac (full of absurdities). Loved Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (considered it the greatest novel of the 19th century) and "Death of Ivan Illych," hated "Resurrection" and "Kreutzer sonata." Liked Gogol, despised Dostoevsky as a melodramatic mystic (he even once gave a student an F in his course for disagreeing with him). Loathed Conrad and Hemingway, but liked the description of the fish in "Old Man and the Sea" and the short story "Killers." Hated Andre Gide, T.S.Eliot, Faulkner, Thomas Mann and D.H.Lawrence and considered them all frauds. Thought Kafka was great, Orwell mediocre. Despised Camus and Sartre, considered Celine a second rater, but liked H.G.Wells. Loved Kubrick's film of Lolita (thought it was absolutely first-rate in every way) but later in the '70s regretted that Sue Lyon (though instantly picked by Nabokov himself along with Kubrick out of a list of thousands) had been too old for the part & suggested that Catherine Demongeot, the boyish looking 11 year old who appeared in Louis Malle's 1960 film "Zazie dans le Metro" would've been just about perfect to induce the right amount of moral repulsion in the audience towards Humbert (and prevent them from enjoying the work on any superficial level other than the purely artistic). Liked avant-garde writers like Borges and Robbe-Grillet and even went out of his way to see Alain Resnais' film with Robbe-Grillet: "Last Year at Marienband." Didn't care for the films of von Sternberg or Fritz Lang, loved Laurel and Hardy. Made a point of saying how much he hated Lenin when it was fashionable to blame the disasters of the Soviet Union on Stalin. Supported the War in Vietnam and sent President Johnson a note saying he appreciated the good job he was doing bombing Vietnam. Never drove an automobile in his life & his wife was the one who drove him through the United States on scientific butterfly-hunting expeditions, all through the many locales & motels & lodges that later appeared in "Lolita."

Seem interesting? You're bound to be offended even if Nabokov is one of your favorite writers. Genius or madman? I would say both, the 'divine madness' of the greatest of artists. Highly recommended for a peek inside the artistically fertile mind, and the tensions that need to be maintained to produce it.

An entertaining read for fans of the man, but probably not for others. Learn what it was about VN that to this day causes well-meaning fans to rave in such affected (and misspelled) tones. See below and you'll know what I mean.

Probably, or better yet most definitely, Nabokov was and is the greatest thing with flesh huddling by its bones and peeping with two ice-cube eyes this miserable little golf-ball of a planet will ever see. This is that man sounding off and checking the dunderheads and charletons who plague or lives with false sympathy and athletic stupidity

My attitude towards the real nature of Ada has changed with time and "distance" from my original reading. When I first read it, I was seduced by the novel's fictional "authors" Ada and Van Veen. On the surface it is the romantic and dashing story of two incestuous lovers, whose love overcame all obstacles. Ada and Van, who write their own story, are far from objective portrayers of their own story, polishing to a sheen their own virtues and talents, while almost obscuring their moral depravity and cruelty. Those who fall by the wayside, are written off by the couple, and made to play bit parts supporting their "grand romance".

Coming back to the novel ten years later, I can see why Nabokov said "I despise Van Veen",the novel's "hero". In fact, the Veens are much subtler Humberts, but much more effective. While few readers would gush about the romantic Humbert, it is easy to brush of Van and Ada's faults,and "buy in" to their interpretations of

their lives. Now, with maturity, I see that Nabokov presented me with a story of moral depravity, daring me to find the true story behind the Veens'gloss,and to use my independent moral judgement.

In his "Strong Opinions" Nabokov suggested that future generations may come tounderstand him as a fierce moralist. This is not easy to see, because most of his narrators are in fact depraved. In Lolita, King Queen Knave, Ada, and Pale Fire, this is very much the case. Nabokov was a moralist in the negative sense. He typically showed the immoral, and assumed that his readers would draw the appropriate conclusions. Like an artist who charcoals a canvas, and draws with an eraser. He was probably amused that leftist literary types in America liked Lolita BECAUSE of Humbert's depravity, and felt more disdain for the American motels and roadside diners described in the novel than they did for Humbert's actions.

The novel gets only four stars, because I didn't like it as much as Pale Fire or Invitation to A Beheading. The novel was unnecessarily difficult, which was of course part of the purpose of the Veens, but Nabokov created them, so he still gets some blame. For moralistic books I much prefer a positive rather than a negative presentation, in the way that Ayn Rand presents morality in The Fountainhead, or Atlas Shrugged.

Speak, Memory was Nabokov's arcane and perhaps irreverent foray into the field of autobiography. That book I assume got Nabokov thinking in depth about the imaginative nature of memory. Nabokovs autobio. disregards the obvious choice of chronology as the organizing principle(too obvious), instead he groups selected memories together according to his various interests. Its a one of a kind collage of an autobio. and after that he wrote Ada which reads like an even more imaginative version of his fictively "remembered" life...perhaps more accurately it is his life as it might(could) have been. Ada is a beautiful book about young love,with romantic and mystical musings about that subject( and insight into the true nature of it), but it is also a meditation on time(perhaps parodic at Proust's expense)as the story takes place in an alternative world, one thats history is similar to ours up to a point but one that took a distinctly different course than our own. Nabokov has said regarding his fiction, "I am not sincere," so chances are if you think he is kidding , well ... Still there is a very high beauty in this book as well as stabs of sorrow. It gives off a very rare light, a beautiful mandarin twilight perhaps as this is Nabokov's last major work. It really is not a book that lends itself to summary, it is perhaps among many other things Nabokovs chance to let all of his literary fetishes(lots of play with literal allusions) have their frolic in his literary never never land in the Russian woods and at sea. A fairy tale for very literate adults with a taste for highbrow and poignant laughter in the dark. A book lovers book.

Nabokov has written novels with better plots, better word-play and puzzles, more acute looks into single characters, but Ada brings it all together in an attenuated amalgam of all things Nabokov. The overall impression is as of watching an epic movie through a gauze curtain on a breezy day. Hints of vivid scenes and characters show through occasionally, but are obscured by a veil of history, language, and diversions. This book belongs in another era, but still challenges the concepts with which we define modernity.
This was easily the most difficult of his books that I've read, and is second in my mind only to Pale Fire. But where Pale Fire only hints at alternate reality and history, Ada plunges in. Where Lolita ultimately exposes the sticky-sweet banality of the nymphette obsession, Ada's poignant and heart-breaking love story challenges our assumptions of propriety. Nabokov seamlessly blends intellectual depth and playfulness with the pure physicality of the human body and its needs and desires.

Where else but between the pages of Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading could one find a story so well written and so exceptionally powerful that you beg for more. The story follows a lonely isolated man who responds to the name of Cinncinatus. He is charged for a crime rarely described and sentenced to death for it. And what more is reason does not exist in this world, it's inhabbited by irrasional, and rather frustrating characters. The characters are odd, granted, but they are described with such passion, and such enthusiasm that they truly come alive. This is an art I love about Nabokov (as well as the other Russian authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc). However there are some weak points to this story, One is the repitition of descriptions, and Two is the vague details of some events. I got confused at some points in the book (however I am only 17 and this is the first non short story I read by nabokov). All in all the book is fascinating, and a defenite read. -sorry for the spelling errors-

It's almost impossible to give Nabokov anything LESS than five stars. He has become such a giant in the world of literature, that one ceases to be able to compare his work to other authors, and instead begins to hold them up against Nabokov's other works.

To validate the statements of so many below, "Invitation to a Beheading" is probably not good intro-Nabokov. Some will find the familiarity of his other works more palatable. As well, it may be unwise to tackle this text without a general knowledge of Eastern European politics.

The text is somewhat muddled in places, and I had a hard time deciding whose fault this was...the author's or the editor's. Some sentences were malingering, unclear, and broke up the natural flow of Nabokov's text, which usually reads easily. In the end, I chose sloppy editing and read on.

This text is HIGHLY introspective and symbolic, and I found myself actually applying pen-and-paper to the symbols I encountered, trying to sort out what Nabokov was saying. So saying, this book ended up being more academic reading than pleasure reading, but has nevertheless taken up quick residence on my favorite bookshelf.

Whoever it was that wrote the encyclopedia entry at the top of this page either didn't read the book or didn't understand Nabakov. Invitation to a Beheading is one of the most gorgeous books I've ever read. To drop it under the label "anti-utopian" and try to resolve the ambiguities at the end in a poorly aimed summary doesn't even hint at the richness of the book. Thank goodness Nabakov dedicated his life to writing literature instead of lousey encyclopedia entries. Leaving the political and entering the artistic, the world Nabakov lived in after all, Invitation to a Beheading is one of the finest metaphores on the artistic condition I've ever read. Yes, Kafka is mild in comparision, and, as Nabakov always asserted, there's no connection anyway. --Dane Larsen

It is unfair but perhaps inevitable that a writer's minor works should forever labour in the shadows of their more successful siblings. Had The Defense been Nabokov's only novel, I believe Nabokov would have been greatly respected, if not celebrated, for his achievement. As it is, we must now see this story as an imperfect expression of the astonishing vision that only found true realisation in Lolita, Pale Fire and Pnin. In those works Nabokov perfected the art of seeing man as simultaneously comic and tragic - sublime and menacing. The Defense, which tells the story of a Russian Grand Master unable truly to understand anything other than the game of chess, provides an early inkling of this vision, but does not bring it wholly to life. Luzhin, our hero, whilst at times effectively comic and at others compellingly tragic, is too often a remote, incomprehensible figure - almost a freak - to sustain the reader's ongoing interest. Indeed there is something cold and controlled about the entire book; it recalls a classical tragedy in its remorseless, inevitable design. What is lacking is a sense of the unpredictable and the giddy - to name just two qualities that Nabokov, in his later American novels, became unrivalled at capturing. Nowadays, I suppose, only those with a genuine passion for Nabokov will find the book an ultimately satisfying read.

The correct title is The Luzhin Defence, referring to a chess manoeuvre; the shortened title culpably fails to convey this, and is as reprehensible as The Ogre for Tournier's The Erl-King, or Magister Ludi for Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. According to Nabokov in his trademark snooty introduction, the protagonist "has been found lovable even by those who know nothing about chess and/or detest all my other books". I know next to nothing about chess and dislike only one of Nabokov's other books among the half-dozen or so I have read (Bend Sinister it was), so perhaps I may be forgiven for finding Luzhin merely amusing. From the very beginning, in his lovingly detailed childhood of the first four chapters, he's an almost completely hopeless creature - sullen, overweight, patronised and overborne not only by those around him - his parents, his "chess father" Valentinov, his wife - but also, most especially and exquisitely, by his Olympian and stratosphere-nosed creator. The only thing that inspires him is chess, the abstract joys of which account for some of the best descriptive passages in what Nabokov justifiably refers to as "this attractive novel". Even those of us who are ignorant of everything but the colours and the pieces can enjoy the recurrence of black and white squares, the weird little Knight Moves of plot or gesture, and the verve and dexterity of Nabokov's prose. This was his third novel, written in Berlin, 1929, and Russian; translated by Michael Scammell and the author, it shows Nabokov starting to scintillate. Except for the final few pages, the last couple of chapters are a bit of a letdown, as Nabokov slackens the plot and indulges in some crude and unnecessary Bolshevik-baiting ("I am not satirical," he declares elsewhere; quite true, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have stopped him from trying now and then); but for the most part this is a magnificent frolic.

The Luzhin Defence is the story of a little boy who loses his first name, and becomes a great genius who ultimately loses everything. It is a biography, spanning A. Luzhin's early childhood recollections; his isolation from society and the love affair that breaks temporarily through that; and his development to a Grandmaster inexorably moving towards the most crucial confrontation of his career.

Nabokov skilfully portrays Luzhin's life becoming like a reflection trapped between two mirrors, finally coming to an inevitable vanishing point. The moments in his life begin to echo and re-echo previous moments, like some recurring melody in the violin music that is a motif in the novel. His actions are like moves in a chess game, particularly in the first half of the novel, where the moments Nabokov castles, then brings out his queen, can be pinpointed.

If this does not sound like a particularly gripping tale, fear not: Nabokov writes about his characters with such elusive, unsentimental humanity, that the reader is infused with warmth or compassion for them all.

And of course, the real reason for ever reading Nabokov is the exquisite rapture of his language. Another reviewer has said here that once known, Nabokov can become as essential as the fresh ocean air; he realises worlds so deeply and so richly through the fullness of his language that the 'real' world risks seeming like a drab faded photocopy in comparison.

Though completely different in style - completely - this book at times reminded me of Samuel Beckett's work, in that in flashes it circumscribes the outer reaches of existential loneliness.

I did not give this 5 stars because the novel seemed falter slightly in its purpose towards the end. Even though this is a staggeringly good novel, it just isn't as scintillatingly brilliant as Lolita.

"Pnin" is a short,but well-written novel (no less, perhaps, than one would expect of Nabokov). In a sense, not much actually happens in the novel - and the overall pace is slow. Yet, I read it as a reflective novel, as if Nabokov were trying to elicit feelings of empathy with his main character, rather than trying to "entertain" the reader by use of plot.

What Nabokov did well for me was to create a sense of appreciation of the life of the emigre - Pnin has had several lives, all disrupted by the tides of history. Although he appears to be a slightly comic, bumbling middle-aged academic, struggling to come to terms with American society (and the English language), this masks the internal tragedies Pnin struggles with on a day-to-day basis, as parts of his past bubble up in his memory.

To be read with sympathy rather than for thrills.

With Pnin, Nabokov does what he has done elsewhere -- he spoofs middle-class, middle-century America, exploding its pretensions quite handily. But the subject matter here is a bit closer to home, as Pnin deals with the plight of Russian expatriates adrift in exile after the Revolution. One imagines Nabokov identified more than a little with his lovable, excitable protagonist, and at times the satire parts to reveal aching sadness.

The last two pages of Chapter Five, in which Pnin ruminates on the memory of a lost love who died in World War II, contain some of my favorite writing in the English language. I will quote here an exquisite paragraph:

"Pnin slowly walked under the solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended to the destinies of the quick."

In passages such as this, Nabokov walks an astonishing tightrope between caustic comedy and heartbreaking tragedy.

The only recommendation I had for this book was the ever-evolving readers' list that Random House is keeping on-line, which tallies the votes of what readers believe are the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century. "Pnin" showed up near the bottom of the list, but with a respectable number of votes. Having always wanted to get past the Nabokov of "Lolita" fame, I took the plunge. What I found knocked my socks off. If you know ANY Russian intelligencia emigres, you know Timofei Pnin. Pnin is an unsubtle chucklehead with a heart of gold who manages to live a great deal of his life in an academic cocoon, as utterly clueless about how he is being arbitrarily protected by his dean as he is clueless about the comic effect he has on others. Doesn't sound promising? Believe me, Nabokov's deft brush turns this slender thread of an idea into a veritable War-and-Peace of an exercise in how we react to others in our life. Dare we laugh at others? We certainly laugh at Pnin. We howl. How dare we? I place this book among the top five percent of the many books I've read over the last five years.

This is one glorious little romp of a novel. I personally don't agree that EVERY character in this book is dispicable, I thought Dreyer was perfectly tragic in his eventual realisation, but even so, I don't find the unsympathetic nature to be a fault. The physical world of King Queen Knave is something that pervades the existence of all the characters even to the most grotesque degree (see Franz's chronic disgust), but even though it may seperate their subjective experience to the extent that everybody refuses to understand anybody elses' position, Nabokov fights the deterministic cycle of the Naturalist novel and shows how these walls of relativism can be broken down, and further, that is is even NECESSARY that they be broken down. But more than that, Nabokov twists the arm of fate in his dark conclusion; he delights in showing the authour's mark behind the facade; and there's the expected round of lovely descriptive passages. One shouldn't take Nabokov's "this is by far my gayest novel" too seriously though; this is a farcical romp, but it is one darkly treacherous romp. The reader thanks God that the world around these three main players isn't caught up in the same downward spiral. That creaky boat ride upon the Lindy, the oars fighting, is sharply analgous the overall ride. This is a very good novel, a treat for anybody familiar with Nabokov, but it definitely can stand its own ground. Either by comparison to Nabokov's more brillant later work, or on its own, this novel is a dark little comic-tragedy.

This was Nabokov's second novel, published when he was a mere 28 years old. Thirty-nine years later, after writing so many other fabulous books he said of King, Queen, Knave "of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest." By this he meant that he enjoyed contemplating its "rapturous composition" and reminiscing of how the idea for it first came to him on the coastal sands of Pomerania. The book maintained a special place in his heart. The theme is in many ways similar to Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, as Nabokov himself admits in the Foreword to the revised English version. I love those other books dearly, but Nabokov's contains several twists and turns that are even more dramatic and less likely for the reader to detect ahead of time than either of those other classic husband/wife/paramour triangle stories.

The setting here is Berlin in the 1920's. The young, unsophisticated Franz arrives on the doorstep of his rich uncle Dreyer with hopes of securing a job in his department store. He gets the job and repays Dreyer's magnanimity by falling for his beautiful wife Martha. (Franz's aunt? Hello!) Martha's seduction of Franz seems to be motivated by something at least bordering on pure boredom, but at any rate, the triangle is set. Dreyer, oblivious to this development, plods on with his money-making schemes and inventions/diversions. Martha, in a departure from the more suicidal natures of Anna K. or Emma B. decides rather to begin clumsily plotting her husband's death so that she and Franz will be able to live happily ever after on his money. But things are not so easy in anything Nabokovian are they? Well, things don't work out the way they're supposed to here either, and that's all I will say. Far be it from me to unravel a rope the Nabokov has so skillfully stretched tight. By the end of this story Franz's conscience lies in tatters, and Martha is _____!

The only reason I don't give the book a perfect 5 stars is because the very ending left me a tad bewildered. I attribute that to a fault in my reading of it and trust that you, being much sharper than I, will rate your experience with King, Queen, Knave a star higher than I did.

This is the only Nabokov novel I have read, but it sticks in my mind as sensual and tragic... definitely reminiscent of Shakespeare.

"The Graduate" also comes to mind.

Nabokov's descriptive detail puts the reader into the rented room of the nephew, where the first sexual encounter takes place. He doesn't romanticize - he tells everything exactly like it "is" & makes it extremely real.

Very suspenseful at the end, although I see the description on this site reveals the entire ending, so it ruins it for any potential readers!

So don't read that, just read the book. It evoked strong emotion in me, suffering with the characters' situations, frustrations, and desires.