Most Popular Books by Vladimir Nabokov

Self-satisfied, delighting in the many fascinating quirks of his own personality, Hermann Hermann is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. But then a chance meeting with a man he believes to be his double reveals a frightening ''split'' in Hermann''s nature. With shattering immediacy, Nabokov takes us into a deranged world, one full of an impudent, startling humour, dominated by the egotistical and scornful figure of a murderer who thinks himself an artist.

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. 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.

Written in Berlin in 1934, Invitation to a Beheading contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as ‘a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ... The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ... But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair’.

Lolita - Pnin - Pale Fire - Lolita: A Screen Play.

There was nobody of her own kind within several thousand light years of where Djan Seriy Anaplian sat. However, news from her home world of Sursamen would still reach her.Djan Seriy Anaplian is, after all, a member of Special Circumstances - a troubleshooter for the Culture, intervening when necessary to ensure that order and balance is maintained throughout the galaxy; and Special Circumstances get to hear about most things. The news itself, unfortunately, is not good. Her father has died. Her brother too, it seems. Both in the latest war against a neighbouring kingdom.Anaplian must journey home, but while she does so, another will seek her out. For someone on Sursamen believes her to be their last hope. What neither of them know is that she might also be the last hope for the entire world.

Nabokov''s dream diary, published for the first time—and placed in biographical and literary context On October 14, 1964, Vladimir Nabokov, a lifelong insomniac, began a curious experiment. Over the next eighty days, immediately upon waking, he wrote down his dreams, following the instructions he found in An Experiment with Time by the British philosopher John Dunne. The purpose was to test the theory that time may go in reverse, so that, paradoxically, a later event may generate an earlier dream. The result—published here for the first time—is a fascinating diary in which Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams (and subsequent daytime episodes) on 118 index cards, which afford a rare glimpse of the artist at his most private. More than an odd biographical footnote, the experiment grew out of Nabokov’s passionate interest in the mystery of time, which influenced many of his novels, including the late masterpiece Ada. Insomniac Dreams, edited by leading Nabokov authority Gennady Barabtarlo, presents the text of Nabokov’s dream experiment, illustrated with a selection of his original index cards, and provides rich annotations and analysis that put them in the context of his life and writings. The book also includes previously unpublished records of Nabokov’s dreams from his letters and notebooks and shows important connections between his fiction and private writings on dreams and time.

Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest major work, written when he was twenty-four, is a full-length play in verse of Shakespearean beauty and richness. 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, this five-act play 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 Tragedy of Mister Morn is Nabokov’s major response to the Russian Revolution, which he had lived through, but it approaches the events of 1917 through the prism of Shakespearean tragedy. Translated by Anastasia Tolstoy and Thomas Karshan

Ganin, un joven ruso exiliado en el Berlin de entreguerras, suena con abandonar la ciudad a la vez que rememora su infancia y adolescencia en Rusia y su temprano romance con Mashenka, mujer deseada e idealizada, amor perdido en el pasado.

Escrita originalmente en ruso en Berln̕, publicada en Pars̕ en 1932 y traducida al inglš en 1971 por su hijo Dmitri bajo supervisin̤ y con posterior revisin̤ del propio Nabokov, Gloria es una de las nueve novelas que escribi ̤en su lengua materna en el exilio europeo entre 1925 y 1937. Su tt̕ulo original, Podvig, podra̕ traducirse como "valerosa proeza" o "gran hazaą", algo que su joven protagonista est ̀empeądo en llevar a cabo.

Two appendixes from Nabokov''s famous edition of Eugene Onegin: his study of versification in English and Russian poetry, and his "term paper" on Pushkin’s Ethiopian ancestor. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Nabokov''s parody, half poem and half commentary on the poem, deals with the escapades of the deposed king of Zemala in a New England college town

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.

Satirische notities over het leven in een klein Amerikaanse universiteitsgemeenschap, waar de onpraktische, groteske, maar toch eigenlijk zo deerniswekkende professor Pnin, Russisch emigrant, niets van begrijpt.