Nabokov: Novels, 1969-1974 (Library of America)

ISBN: 1883011205

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Condition: New

This Library of America volume is the third of three devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, and contains the evanescent works of his later years.Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969), the longest of Nabokovs novels, is a witty and parodic account of a mans lifelong love for his sister. All of his favorite themes and most characteristic techniques are woven into this culminating work of Nabokovs imagination. The linguistic richness of the books free blending of English, Russian, and French is matched by the baroque and dreamlike splendor of the alternate universe it creates, a universe in which time moves in more than one direction and all details are cunningly interrelated. Alfred Kazin wrote on its original publication: Ada, coming after Lolita and Pale Fire, makes a trilogy with no contemporary peer.Transparent Things (1972) is a haunting novella of the anguished life of Hugh Person, a young American editor and proofreader: his marriage, the murder of his wife, and the lone journey to uncover the truth about the past. With its multiple narrative voices and fusion of dream and memory, it is among the most formally experimental of Nabokovs works.Look at the Harlequins! (1974), Nabokovs final novel, concerns Vadim Vadimovitch N., a novelist very much like Nabokov himself. This ironic, intricate hall of mirrors, startling in its shifts of tone and off-key echoes of Nabokovs earlier books, often blurs the line between the worlds of reality and of literary invention.Nabokovs penciled corrections in his own copies of his works are incorporated into these, the most authoritative versions available, and have been prepared with the assistance of Dmitri Nabokov, the novelists son.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nations literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, Americas best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.