Mary, Vladimir Nabokov
Mary, Vladimir Nabokov
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Mary

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Narrator: Christopher Lane

Unabridged: 4 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/28/2010

Synopsis

In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of serio-comic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin’s, who, he discovers, is Mary’s husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.“Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” —John Updike

About Vladimir Nabokov

One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Valeriu on December 18, 2024

Un roman simplu, fără subtilități narative și fără digresiuni metafizice. A intrat în biblioteca mea afectivă de la prima lectură (în 1997), într-o ediție scoasă de răposata editură Albatros. Tema primei iubiri nu era o noutate în literatura rusă. Turgheniev (Prima iubire) și Dostoievski (Adolescentu......more

Goodreads review by J.L. on December 13, 2018

Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, Mary, is a well written story about a youthful love. In many respects, this short novel feels like a Dostoevsky novel exploring different and not quite so existential themes. Unfortunately, Mary doesn't live up to either Dostoevsky's or Nabokov's later works. The play......more

Goodreads review by Parthiban on June 15, 2016

Not all loves come together; Not all loves fade away; some remain dormant as an indelible image of memory within us and gnaws at us from inside only during the loneliest hours. Especially, the first love! This is such a story of a loving image which lives forever in the shadow of an ill-fated lover.......more

Goodreads review by Matthew Ted on September 17, 2021

[11th book of 2021. No artist for this review as I feel rather uninspired, but there is a Magritte painting that reminded me of a certain element.] Nabokov is now regarded one of the big literary giants of the 20th century, and as his opinions are perhaps just as well known as his novels; he famously......more

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on May 25, 2013

I read this in 1999 and then again a few years ago. THIS is what first novels should aspire towards. Instead every MFA wants to Pynchon-it over the fence and we have reams of bad puns and pop culture references all alluding to some Grand Joke. Well, that wasn't funny, was it? This is a tome about es......more

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