Nabokov in 90 Minutes

Great Writers in 90 Minutes

by Paul Strathern

Building on his enormously successful series of Philosophers in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's great writers. He brings their lives and ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the writer and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2004

About the author

Paul Strathern (born 1940) is a English writer and academic. He was born in London, and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, after which he served in the Merchant Navy over a period of two years. He then lived on a Greek island. In 1966 he travelled overland to India and the Himalayas. His novel A Season in Abyssinia won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1972.

Besides five novels, he has also written numerous books on science, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and economics.

Reviews

[Lay Len Ching]

Fascinating content. Bad writing.

More notes:
Picked this up at the library on my search for Letters to Vera (will be reading next). Read in one sitting on my (very very long) trip to Amsterdam. Finished on the train to Eindhoven, NL.

[Timothy McNeil]

As I have written earlier, how one take a Strathern book largely depends upon one's mood. Per usual, Strathern offers up weak (oftentimes ill-informed) psychological analyses of the author's work and select snippets of text that do little to highlight, underscore, or agree with the point he is trying to make. Where the majority of the book does its best to present Nabokov's life and his relationship with the iconic works of Russian literature, it still manages to devolve into meandering qualified praise that is more likely to confuse a reader than inform him/her.