From the Bookshelf of Nabokov in Three Years…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
What Members Thought
Nabokov's biographer Brian Boyd claimed this novel to be "Nabokov's first masterpiece" and placed it alongside The Gift , Lolita , Pale Fire and Ada, or Ardor as Nabokov's best long works. Honestly, I didn't think it was that good. It uses Nabokov's philosophy of literature as a challenge/puzzle between the reader and the author literally as the protagonist Luzhin is a chess master who sees his life in chess problems. I don't think I really grasped the "point" and the prose was pretty aver
...more
The usual Nabokov genius. No one does with language what he does, despite the fact that this was one of the early Russian novels, though translated (or co-translated) by the man himself.
Luzhin reminds me of Pnin.. and in certain ways Humbert Humbert as well, though less so. Both men are somewhat prematurely aged, both physically fragile and dissolute. They hunch, they cough, they shuffle like men twenty years their senior. They are absent minded, neglectful, deaf to social norms and standards o ...more
Luzhin reminds me of Pnin.. and in certain ways Humbert Humbert as well, though less so. Both men are somewhat prematurely aged, both physically fragile and dissolute. They hunch, they cough, they shuffle like men twenty years their senior. They are absent minded, neglectful, deaf to social norms and standards o ...more
