This Library of America volume is the second of three volumes
presenting the most authoritative versions of the English works of the
brilliant Russian émigré, Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita (1955), Nabokov's single most famous work, is one of the most
controversial and widely read books of its time. Funny, satiric,
poignant, filled with allusions to earlier American writers, it is the
"confession" of a middle-aged, sophisticated European émigré's
passionate obsession with a twelve-year-old American "nymphet," and the
story of their wanderings across a late 1940s America of highways and
motels. (Nabokov's film adaptation of Lolita, as originally written
for director Stanley Kubrick, is also included.)
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Pnin* (1957) is a comic masterpiece about a gentle, bald Russian émigré
professor in an American college town who is never quite able to master
its language, its politics, or its train schedule. Nabokov's years as a
teacher provided rich background for this satirical picture of academic
life, with an unforgettable figure at its center: "It was the world that
was absent-minded and it was Pnin whose business it was to set it
straight. His life was a constant war with insensate objects that fell
apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got
themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence."
Pale Fire (1962) is a tour de force in the form of an ostensibly
autobiographical poem by a recently deceased American poet and a
critical commentary by an academic who is something other than what he
seems. Its unique structure, pitting artist against seemingly worshipful
critic, sets the stage for some of Nabokov's most intricate games of
deception and concealment.
The texts of this volume incorporate Nabokov's penciled corrections in
his own copies of his works which correct long-standing errors, and have
been prepared with the assistance of Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's son.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
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publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
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