Bend Sinister (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Vladimir Nabokov

Bend Sinister (Penguin Modern Classics)

book data

472 ratings, 3.88 average rating, 33 reviews (more data...)

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published

2001 (first published 1981) by Penguin Books Ltd

binding

Paperback, 208 pages

isbn

0141185767 (isbn13: 9780141185767)

description

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic.Ā Ā...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 662)

All ratings | 5 stars (116) | 4 stars (212) | 3 stars (119) | 2 stars (20) | 1 star (4) | avg 3.88

all | this edition

Bob

Bob rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

08/27/07

Read in September, 2007

The exact edition I got is listed as items 4 and 5 on this page www.abebooks.com/servlet/Searc... - it is a 1964 production by Time-Life Books who I guess had pretensions at the time to be arbiters of high culture before settling down to produce Homer Simpson's Carpenter's Encyclopedia.
The cover is of interest - an illustration faintly reminiscent of de Kooning by Louis Di Valentin who (a...more

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Misha

Misha marked it as to-read

10/21/08

bookshelves: to-read

I skimmed through the first few pages at Adventures Underground, having forsaken an actual dinner break to go book shopping instead. I later ate some teriyaki-flavored beef jerky and a packet of Reese's Pieces. Gorgeous prose in those first few pages. Just gorgeous. As I walked toward the front of the store to check out, the young male owner of the store leaned against the counter. I wondered if he recognized me. I wrote about the store when it opened. There was no recognition in his eyes, but h...more

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q rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

03/21/08

Read in March, 2008

My first Nabokov, chosen because it was the first he wrote after moving to the States and because of the heraldic title.
It deals with the nature of grief and with twentieth-century European totalitarianism.

The setup is improbable but Nabokov needs it in order to take a look at all the things he has in mind. He uses every trick I've ever seen a writer use so that he can examine nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, memory, brutality, bureaucracy, Freud, childhood, analyses of Shake...more My first Nabokov, chosen because it was the first he wrote after moving to the States and because of the heraldic title.
It deals with the nature of grief and with twentieth-century European totalitarianism.

The setup is improbable but Nabokov needs it in order to take a look at all the things he has in mind. He uses every trick I've ever seen a writer use so that he can examine nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, memory, brutality, bureaucracy, Freud, childhood, analyses of Shakespeare, on and on. The novel's style goes through many changes, more than he could get away with if he weren't using the shifts to highlight the inconsistencies of profound grief. These shifts in tone allow him to approach many of his topics from various angles, and he does it beautifully.

In addition to having a novel to read, it felt as though I was being given a lesson in novel construction. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but at every turn I thought the subtext was remarkably clear, sometimes almost too clear to call it subtext. Through most of it, I felt as though there were a little Nabokov sitting on my shoulder, frequently winking and occasionally asking a rhetorical "You see why I did that, don't you?" He skates close to the line between clever and too clever most of the time, but his sense of where that line is seems nearly infallible.

Because of that feeling of being given a lesson and because there is so much wordplay, I had more emotional distance than I usually do when reading a book. I was surprised when the inevitable ending, most of which I'd seen coming a long, long way off, was truly disturbing. He needs to make it horrifying (horror is expected from page one, so I don't think that's a spoiler), and he can't do that without introducing a final twist, and he does, and it works. I was duly horrified, and the little Nabokov was still winking.

The only bits I found a little annoying dealt with Freud. Nabokov seems to have a grudge against him. That's fine by me, but there was too much of it. Maybe when the book was written it would have seemed more relevant, but in 2008 it struck me as gratuitous....less

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Jesse

Jesse rated it:

04/07/08

Read in April, 2008

Nabakov does dystopia, how could one go wrong? Some of the detours left me a bit ungrounded, but -- being Nabakov -- there was always the basic trust that the puzzles were the result of (and solution to) some fantastic literary system. I didn't figure out the book's internal language (apparently) revealed via a Rosetta Stone-like usage of Shakespeare, but appreciated it nonetheless. The plot is fairly interchangeable with other dystopian novels, I'd think, but the sensibilities (structure, humor...more

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Brian

Brian rated it:

10/10/07

Read in January, 2005

i shied away from this book based on some of the nabokov-criticism i had read. what kept me away from it was all of the reviews in which it is touted as a political novel, or an anti-establishment novel, or as some other nonsensical "genre-novel". sure, there is a dictatorship and a citizen as characters... but still, it's hardly deserving of the lowly categorizations that most have attached to it.

the story of a man who is broken by an absurd world. it's scary, very scary. na...more

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Rachel

Rachel added it (review of isbn 080943623X)

11/17/08

Read in July, 2008

I have meticulously gone though this novel and dissected it. The basic plot (which is only ornamental), is that a fictional dictatorial state tries to convince a philosopher-celebrity Krug to pledge alligence to their new state. They don't succeed until they get their hands on his son, and botch everything up. Reading Nabokov challenges me, improves my vocabulary, and encourages me to think like a literary detective.

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madeline

madeline rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

06/15/08

Read in June, 2008

the book ended with complete detachment from the main character in his (almost comic) insanity. i got up from my lawn chair in the early evening sunlight, heard two police cars in the distance, felt nothing for whoever was being chased, and went inside to eat strawberry shortcake.

twang. a good night for mothing.

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Richard

Richard rated it:

09/12/08

Read in September, 2008

farcical, bleak, and amazing, this is nabokov's satire of stalinism. it takes things a few steps further than anything by orwell, burgess or kafka while still keeping the distanced, absurdist tone of his other works that i've read. not for the squeamish, especially the last 50 pages as things unravel.

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Father

Father rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

03/20/08

bookshelves: fiction-literature

Nabakov is one of my favorite writers of all time. I've read this book several times and learned something new everytime. The time(s) and place(s) Nabakov seems to be alluding to could be many. It could be read as pure fiction or a political commentary. Could it be happening now? Could it happen here?

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jeannie

jeannie rated it:

03/09/08

recommends it for: wicked people. I mean everyone.

My favorite Nabokov and possibly my favorite novel ever. Of course Nabokov feels the sour rise of bile when we use words such as 'favorite' to describe this horrible horrible horrible (brilliant) novel. He had me at "dull dun dead leaves".

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Amy

Amy rated it:

05/29/08

God I love Nabokov. The intro to my copy classifies his humor as "oft-cruel," which has always mystified me as a criticism of the old butterfly collector, until I found myself giggling over a passage about a beheaded toddler.

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1 comment

Jeremy

Jeremy rated it:

08/02/07

recommends it for: anti-dictators

a very depressing and horrifying tale of a man whose unwillingness to bend to the whims of an absurd dictatorship destroys all he has - with the required nabokovian ploys, wit, metaphors and chicanery.

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Akon

Akon rated it:

02/22/08

This was my first book by Nabokov and i loved, loved it! that's pretty much all i can say. Nabokov has a very unique way of expressing words/language and this book portrays this well.

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Claire

Claire rated it:

04/09/08

I'm not sure why this book is one of Nabokov's lesser appreciated novels...nor can I figure out why most people find it "unreadable." I loved it!

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daniel

daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

01/22/08

Read in January, 2008

just re-read this short debut novel by nabokov...you can knock this thing out in an hour or so...well worth reading again..and again.....

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Matt

Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

07/17/08

Haunting and humane. The protagonist, Krug, can also be viewed as an antagonist, by way of Toad, the book's obvious antagonist.

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Inkpenshmee

Inkpenshmee rated it:

02/10/08

bookshelves: the-classics

Read in January, 2000

Crazy f*ed up Russian book. Very interesting look at power and politics. Tragedy and loss...peppered with comic moments .

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Ian Mathers

Ian rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

07/17/08

My first Nabokov. Good, but I can't imagine it's among the best of his work. Heartbreaking in places, for sure.

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Janean

Janean rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

06/13/07

Read in September, 2005

I still want to vomit when I remember the climax of this book. Nabokov is a diabolical genius.

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Leah

Leah rated it:

(review of isbn 0679727272)

06/25/07

Read in June, 2007

Quickly becoming one of my favorites.
And the ending turned out a glorious disappointment.

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trivia questions

In the unusual production of Hamlet referred to in Nabokov's Bend Sinister, who is now the hero of the play?
a. Claudius
b. Ophelia
c. Fortinbras
d. Osric
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quotes from this book

"Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth." More quotes...