Vladimir Nabokov : Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951 : The Real Life of Sebastian Knight Bend Sinister Speak Memory (Library of America)

About this book

This Library of America volume is the first of three volumes presenting the most authoritative versions of the English works of the brilliant Russian migr Vladimir Nabokov. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight the first novel Vladimir Nabokov wrote in English published a year after he moved to the United States is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writers half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of a famous author. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception this novel was published in 1941. Bend Sinister (1947) Nabokovs most explicitly political novel is the haunting dreamlike story of Adam Krug a quiet philosophy professor caught up in the bureaucratic bungling of a totalitarian police state. I am neither a didacticist nor an allegorizer Nabokov affirms in his introduction to the novel but goes on to state: There can be distinguished no doubt certain reflections in the glass caused by idiotic and despicable regimes that we all know and that have brushed against me in the course of my life: worlds of tyranny and torture of Fascists and Bolshevists of Philistine thinkers and jack-booted baboons. Speak Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1951; revised 1966) Nabokovs dazzling memoir of his childhood in imperial Russia and exile in Europe is central to an understanding of his art. With its balance of inner and outer worldsof family chronicle and private fantasy revolutions and butterflies the games of childhood and the disasters of politicsthe work that Nabokov called a systematically correlated assemblage of personal recollections is a haunting transmutation of life into art. The texts of this volume incorporate Nabokovs penciled corrections in his own copies of his works and correct long-standing errors. They are the most authoritative versions available and have been prepared with the assistance of Dmitri Nabokov the novelists son. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nations literary heritage by publishing and keeping permanently in print Americas best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date authoritative editions that average 1 000 pages in length feature cloth covers sewn bindings and ribbon markers and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.