«Отчаяние» (1932, опубл. 1934) — шестой русский роман Владимира Набокова, в котором автор вновь — как прежде в «Короле, даме, валете» и «Камере обскуре» — обращается к немецкому материалу и криминальному сюжету. Берлинский коммерсант средней руки задумывает и совершает «идеальное убийство» с целью получить страховку, а затем пишет об этом повесть, перечитывая которую, с ужасом обнаруживает зафиксированный в ней роковой изъян своего хитроумного замысла... В рамках детективной истории о мнимом двойничестве и об «убийстве как разновидности изящных искусств» Набоков оригинально разыгрывает вечные литературные сюжеты о гении и злодействе, истинном и ложном таланте, преступлении и наказании, которые впоследствии будут развернуты в знаменитой «Лолите».»

Morn, a masked king, rules over a realm to which he has restored order after a violent revolution. Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed bloodshed and disaster when Midia's husband returns, provoking a duel and the return of chaos that Morn has fought so hard to prevent. The first major work and the only play of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pnin, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is translated and published in English here for the first time, and is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy.

Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle — Nabokov's other great love story — offers even more sexual and imaginative surprises than Lolita. A romance that follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van on his uncle's country estate, in a 'dream-bright' America, through eighty years of rapture, Nabokov's 'longest, richest, most ambitious novel' also becomes, as Brian Boyd says, a great many other things: 'myth, fairy tale, utopian idyll, family chronicle, personal memoir, historical romance, erotic catalogue ... picture gallery and filmic folly'.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these?

Look at the harlequins... Play! Invent the world! Invent reality. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre numerical nimbus syndrome.

Humbert Humbert — scholar, aesthete and romantic — has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.

«In general «Glory» is my happiest thing.» «The fun of «Glory» is... to be sought in the echoing and linking of minor events, in back-and-forth switches, which produce an illusion of impetus; in an old daydream directly becoming the blessing of the ball hugged to one's chest, or in the casual vision of Martin's mother grieving beyond the time-frame of the novel in an abstraction of the future that the reader can only guess at, even after he has raced through the last seven chapters where a regular madness of structural twists and a masquerade of all characters culminate in a furious finale, although nothing much happens at the very end — just a bird perching on a wicket in the greyness of a wet day» — Vladimir Nabokov.»

Lorsque l'Armée rouge menace de s'emparer de la Crimée, Martin et sa mère fuient en Europe de l'Ouest. C'est à Cambridge que le jeune héros va faire ses études. Il y côtoie des Anglais, tel son ami Darwin, mais aussi des Russes, plus ou moins anglophiles. Il y retrouve surtout Sonia, sa jeune et intelligente cousine. Est-ce pour l'impressionner qu'il décide de transcender sa nature et imagine un projet inutile et fou?

Personnage qui va droit au cœur, le professeur Timofey Pavlovitch Pnine est un savant russe transplanté aux États-Unis, inadapté captivant et délicieux qui incarne l'héroïsme de l'échec et une sorte de drôlerie qui tire les larmes...

«Le château d'Ardis — les Ardeurs et les arbres d'Ardis — voilà le leitmotiv qui revient en vagues perlées dans Ada, vaste et délicieuse chronique, dont la plus grande partie a pour décor une Amérique à la clarté de rêve — car nos souvenirs d'enfance ne sont-ils pas comparables aux caravelles voguant vers la Vinelande, qu'encerclent indolemment les blancs oiseaux des rêves? Le protagoniste, héritier de l'une de nos plus illustres et plus opulentes familles, est le Dr Van Veen, fils du baron «Démon» Veen, mémorable personnalité de Reno et de Manhattan. La fin d'une époque extraordinaire coïncide avec la non moins extraordinaire enfance de Van. Il n'est rien dans la littérature mondiale, sauf peut-être les réminiscences du comte Tolstoï, qui puisse le disputer en allégresse pure, innocence arcadienne, avec les chapitres de ce livre qui traitent d' «Ardis». «Ada est probablement l'œuvre pour laquelle j'aimerais qu'on se souvienne de moi».»

When Lolita was first published in 1955 it created a sensation and established Nabokov as one of the most original prose writers of the twentieth century. This annotated edition, a revised and considerably expanded version of the 1970 edition, does full justice to the textual riches of Lolita, illuminating the elaborate verbal textures and showing how they contribute to the novel's overall meaning. Alfred Appel, Jr. also provides fresh observations on the novel's artifice, games and verbal patternings and a delightful biographical vignette of Nabokov. The annotations themselves were prepared in consultation with Nabokov while newly identified allusions were confirmed by him during the final years of his life.

Nabokov's first novel. A tale of youth, first love and nostalgia. In a Berlin rooming house, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future relives his first love affair.

A rich evocation of Nabokov's life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including LOLITA, PNIN, DESPAIR, THE GIFT and others.

«Dopo trentasei anni, rileggo Lolita di Vladimir Nabokov... Trentasei anni sono moltissimi per un libro. Ma Lolita ha, come allora, un'abbagliante grandezza. Che respiro. Che forza romanzesca. Che potere verbale. Che scintillante alterigia. Che gioco sovrano. Come accade sempre ai grandi libri, Lolita si е spostato nel mio ricordo. Non mi его accorto che possedesse una cosi straordinaria suggestione mitica».»

Гениальный шахматист Лужин живет в чудесном мире древней божественной игры, ее гармония и строгая логика пленили его. Жизнь удивительным образом останавливается на незаконченной партии, и Лужин предпочитает выпасть из игры в вечность...

Erotic, love story. Familiar cronic of one of the most passion stories of the modern literature.

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.' Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. This seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.

A novel constructed around the last great poem of a fictional American poet, John Shade, and an account of his death. The poem appears in full and the narrative develops through the lengthy, and increasingly eccentric, notes by his posthumous editor.

Der vielumstrittene, längst zu Weltruhm gelangte und zweifach verfilmte Roman einer tragischen Pasion: Ein Vierzigjähriger verfällt dem grazilen Zauber einer kindlichen Nymphe und erfährt die Liebe als absolute Macht über Leben und Tod.