Look at the Harlequins!

Second reading. A mock-memoir by the fictional Russian novelist Vadim Vadimovich, whose life is not dissimilar to Nabokov's own. As a mere strip of a lad VV flees the Bolsheviks leaving — unlike VN — a dead Red in his wake. Like VN too he first lives in Berlin, then Paris, and finally comes to Ameri......more

4,5 *......more

A very funny idea for the Master's last book. He was obviously sick to death of people asking him whether his novels were autobiographical. ("Tell me, I'm curious - have you ever raped any 12-year-old girls?") So here, he writes a novel about an author who on the surface is rather like Nabokov, and......more

Nabokov's last finished novel isn't a career summation so much as a madcap burlesque of his own work and reputation. The narrator here is a Bizarro world version of his creator, a nudist and drunkard who's been married "three or four times" and falls for a nymphette who happens to be his own daughte......more