Five novels

by Vladimir Nabokov

Text: English, Russian (translation)

Genres: Fiction

1084 pages, Leather Bound

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Vladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up trilingual, speaking Russian, English, and French in a household that nurtured his intellectual curiosities, including a lifelong passion for butterflies. This seemingly idyllic, privileged existence was abruptly shattered by the Bolshevik Revolution, which forced the family into permanent exile in 1919. This early, profound experience of displacement and the loss of a homeland became a central, enduring theme in his subsequent work, fueling his exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irretrievable past.
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to

Reviews

[L.H. Beynon · Rating 3 out of 5]

My order of preference for these five novels is:
Invitation to a Beheading (4 stars)
Lolita (4 stars)
Glory (3 stars)
King Queen Knave (3 stars)
The Gift (2 stars)

"Invitation to a Beheading" was moving, strange and mystical. There were some very strange moments and it was often hard to tell what was real and what wasn't. It sagged a little in the middle, but I enjoyed it overall.

"Lolita" was also moving and a lot of it was creepy. Humbert Humbert is an awful man, but everything being from his perspective was genius. It was hard to see Dolores as a person at times, (because Humbert didn't really see her as one,) but her personhood kept coming through Humbert's attempt to re-form her in his own image. The ending was sad, but very good.

I wasn't sure why "Glory" was called "Glory". I empathised with the main character's lack of ambition and direction. The recurring characters were interesting and I liked the way that the reader could have a different perspective on them than the perspective that the main character had.

"King Queen Knave" started off as one book and seemed to shift into something else by the end. I had a good idea as to who the King, Queen and Knave were, but was confused about why Chess was mentioned at the beginning, but pretty much nowhere else. There was a change in perspective at the end, regarding one of the characters, which I enjoyed.

"The Gift" was about a poet. There were long sections in it about Russian poetry, which felt more like essays than parts of a novel. I wasn't very interested in "The Gift" though the writing was very good - as it was throughout all five novels.