«'Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest', Nabokov wrote of «King, Queen, Knave». Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. 'If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in' — Nabokov darts a glance to the reader — 'he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there'.»

«Вниманию читателей предлагается полный неадаптированный текст известного романа Владимира Набокова «Лолита» (1955). Издание рассчитано на лиц, владеющих основами английского языка и совершенствующих свои навыки в нем.»

«Written in Berlin in 1934, «Invitation to a Beheading» contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as 'a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ...The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ...But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair'.»

'Speak, memory', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections — of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers — on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography, which is itself a work of art.

The state has been recently taken over and is being run by the tyrannical and philistine 'Average Man' party. Under the slogans of equality and happiness for all, it has done away with individualism and freedom of thought. Only John Krug, a brilliant philosopher, stands up to the regime. His antagonist, the leader of the new party, is his old school enemy, Paduk — known as the 'Toad'. Grieving over his wife's recent death, Krug is at first dismissive of Paduk's activities and sees no threat in them. But the sinister machine which Paduk has set in motion may prove stronger than the individual, stronger even than the grotesque 'Toad' himself.

Albinus — rich, married middle-aged and respectable — is an art critic and aspiring filmmaker who lusts after the coquettish young cinema usherette Margot. Gradually he seduces her and convinces himself he is irresistible to her, but Margot has other plans. She wants to be a film star, and when Albinus introduces her to the American movie producer Axel Rex, she sees her chance — and plotting, duplicity and tragedy ensue.

Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood and rising to the rank of international Grandmaster, Luzhin develops a lyrical passion for chess that renders the real world a phantom. As he confronts the fiery, swift-swooping Italian Grandmaster, Turati, he brings into play his carefully devised defence.

Spurred on by admiration for his novelist half-brother and irritation at the biography written about him by Mr Goodman ('his slapdash and very misleading book'), the narrator, V, sets out to record Sebastian Knight's life as he understands it. But buried amid the extensive quoting, digressions, seeming explanations and digs, Sebastian's erratic and troubled persona remains as elusive as ever. Nabokov's first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a nuanced, enigmatic potrayal of the conflict between the real and the unreal, and the futile quest for human truth.