Russian Novels Collected Novels
(The Library of America edition)Everyman's Library edition
(Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory)Autobiography, Interviews,
Plays & Critical Writings
russian novels
Mary: A Novel
(1926, 1970) Ganin, a Russian émigré living in a Berlin pension, discovers that the wife of one of the boarders (due to arrive from Russia) is his first love.King, Queen, Knave
(1928, 1968) Kurt Dreyer, a Berlin businessman, is the unsuspecting target of a murder conspiracy organized by his pretty (but not very bright) wife, Martha, and Franz Bubendorf, a young relative of Dreyer's who comes to the city to work for him.The Defense
(1930, 1964) Lushin, once a chess child prodigy, finds "reality" engulged by games and game-theory.Glory
(1932, 1971) Martin, an émigré, returns to Russia to impress a woman.Laughter in the Dark
(1932, 1938) Albinus, a businessman, leaves his wife for young Margot, and is unhappy. Much pleasure in the telling.Despair
(1934, 1937) A case of mistaken mistaken identity -- or (rather) mistaken resemblance.The Gift
(1938, 1963) Ruminations on Russian literature: Fyodor, a young and talented writer, falls in love with a girl and with a few worthy shades.Invitation to a Beheading
(1938, 1959) Cincinnatus has been sentenced to death -- the world he inhabits is absurd, surreal, sometimes gimcrack.The Eye
(1938, 1965) More ghosts! More ghosts!The Enchanter
(1939, 1986) A humbler Humbert chasing after a lowlier Lo.
american novels
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
(1941) Sebastian Knight's brother remembers the life and works of his sibbling, and in doing so finds himself enmeshed in Sebastian's fiction and in his faulty biographist's fancy. A neat mirror trick.Bend Sinister
(1947) | FFL | Adam Krug suffers the idiocies of a parrot dictatorship -- half Hitlerian, half Stalinist.Lolita | The Lo_Shop
(1955) | FFL | COM | Humbert Humbert falls for Dolores Haze.Pnin
(1957) | FFL | Professor Pnin deals with son, career, squirrels, and various mishaps.Pale Fire
(1962) | FFL | Charles Kinbote annotates John Shade's epic canto -- some confusion arises as to what qualifies as scholiana and what as delusional. Some doubt as to who is creating who also creeps in.Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
(1969) A massive treatise on Antiterra, a place not unlike earth. Also, a moving (if technically incestual) love story.Transparent Things
(1972) | FFL | COM | Hugh interacts with ghosts in Switzerland.Look at the Harlequins!
(1974) A Naboklone reflects on marriage and art, and finds a suspicious double in a bookshop. A problem of perspective leads to a very specialized kind of neurosis.The Original of Laura
(1976) Laura, long thought lost, is rediscovered in the least likely of places -- a literary mystery.
the library of america editions
Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951
- About The Library of America editions.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, and Speak, Memory: an Autobiography Revisited.Novels 1955-1962
Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire, and Lolita: A Screenplay.Novels 1969-1974
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Transparent Things, and Look at the Harlequins!
collected short stories
The Short Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
The hardcover edition -- it contains all of Nabokov's short stories, including a few previously unpublished (and untranslated) pieces.The Short Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
The Vintage paperback edition -- same as above.
autobiography, interviews, plays, & critical writings
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
FFL | A brief crack of light between two centuries of darkness.Strong Opinions
Wherein the author thinks like a genius, writes like a distinguished author, and speaks like a child.The Man from USSR & Other Plays
Collected plays.Nikolai Gogol
The part of the nose is played by some other organ and vice-versa.Lectures on Literature
The seat of artistic delight for Lectures on Literature is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.Lectures on Russian Literature
Karenin. Not Karenina.Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings
A trove of uncollected lepidopteral matter, as well as relevant lep passages from VN stories and novels.
translations
Eugene Onegin
A strict and faithful Englishing of Pushkin's masterpiece.Eugene Onegin (Commentary)
Nabokov's companion to the novel-in-verse, a rich and heavy tome chockfull of arcana.A Hero of Our Time
Lermontov's interwoven tales.
letters
Selected Letters, 1940-1977
The hardcover edition of Nabokov's letters.Selected Letters, 1940-1977
The paperback edition of Nabokov's letters.The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence Between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, 1940-1971
Listed as out of print. I found my copy in a used bookstore, and it might be cheaper for you to do the same. (A Note: Barnes & Noble has an excellent used-books database, so you might be better off finding it there.)
everyman's library edition
Lolita
- About the Everyman's Library Edition.
Introduction by Martin Amis.Pale Fire
Introduction by Richard Rorty.Speak, Memory
Introduction by Brian Boyd.
media
Lolita (Audio)
The book as read by James Mason, who played Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's version. Abridged.Lolita (Audio)
The book as read by Jeremy Irons, who played Humbert Humbert in Adrian Lyne's version. Unabridged.Lolita & Poems (Audio)
Recordings of Nabokov reading from his poems and from bits and pieces of Lolita.Lolita Soundtrack 1962 (CD)
The Nelson Riddle sountrack to the Kubrick adaptation -- contains snippets of dialogue from the movie. Ya-ya!Lolita Soundtrack 1997 (CD)
The Ennio Morricone sountrack to the Lyne adaptation.Lolita 1962 (VHS)
The Stanley Kubrick movie starring James Mason (as Hum), Sue Lyons (as Lo), and Peter Sellers (as Quilty).Lolita 1962 (DVD)
The Stanley Kubrick movie starring James Mason (as Hum), Sue Lyons (as Lo), and Peter Sellers (as Quilty).Lolita 1997 (VHS)
The Adrian Lyne movie starring Jeremy Irons (as Hum), Dominique Swain (as Lo), Melanie Griffith (as Charlotte), and Frank Langella (as Quilty).Lolita 1997 (DVD)
The Adrian Lyne movie starring Jeremy Irons (as Hum), Dominique Swain (as Lo), Melanie Griffith (as Charlotte), and Frank Langella (as Quilty).Nabokov on Kafka (VHS)
Christopher Plummer plays Nabokov giving one of his Lectures on Literature.The Luzhin Defence (DVD)
The Marleen Gorris movie starring John Turturro and Emily Watson.The Luzhin Defence (VHS)
The Marleen Gorris movie starring John Turturro and Emily Watson.
biographical, research & scholarly resources
Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years
By Brian Boyd. The first volume in the authoritative Nabokov biography. Also contains chapters on noteworthy early VN works.Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years
By Brian Boyd. The second volume in the authoritative Nabokov biography. Also contains individual chapters on all of the English novels, as well as other noteworthy works.Vladimir Nabokov (Overlook Illustrated Lives)
By Jane Grayson. A brief, lovely, and profusely illustrated biography of the author.Reading Lolita in Tehran
By Azar Nafisi. A memoir in books.Nabokov's Ada: The Place of Consciousness
By Brian Boyd. (Available as an e-book or in paperback. Highly recommended either way.) Publisher information.Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
By Stacy Schiff. A biography of Vladimir Nabokov's wife, to whom he dedicated all his novels.The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov
A treat: The book covers all imaginable VN scholiana through a wide-ranging series of articles. (Alas, it appears to be out-of-print.)The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov & the Risks of Fiction
By Michael WoodPniniad: Vladimir Nabokov & Marc Szeftel
By Galya Diment. A neat biography of the man who probably inspired Pnin.Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius
By Kurt Johnson and Steven L. Coates. A long-overdue book on the lesser known half of VN's passion -- butterflies, specially the Karner blue.Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery
By Brian BoydNabokov & the Novel
By Ellen PiferNabokov at the Limits: Redrawing Critical Boundaries (Border Crossings, Vol 4)
Lisa Zunshine (Ed.)Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives (Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature)
Julian Conolly (Ed.)Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism
By John Burt FosterNabokov's Invitation to a Beheading: A Critical Companion (Northwestern/Aatseel Critical Companions to Russian Literature)
Julian Conolly (Ed.)The World of Nabokov's Stories
By Maxim D. ShrayerSocial Semiotics As Praxis: Text, Meaning, and Nabokov's Ada (Thl 74)
By Paul J. ThibaultVladimir Nabokov: Life, Work, and Criticism (Authoritative Studies in World Literature)
By C.S RossNabokov at Cornell
Edited by Gavriel Shapiro. Forthcoming. (Publisher's Site.)Nabokov Who's Who: A Complete Guide to Characters and Proper Names
By Christine Rydel. (Publication date unknown.)
rare, russian, or out-of-print
Powells
One of the largest used-books stores in the US.eBay
The largest internet auction site. They've sold Olympia press editions of Lolita (for quite a bit) and old library copies of many VN books (for quite a bit less).Barnes and Noble
Not my favorite bookstore, but their used & out-of-print search engine is excellent.Lira (A Russian eStore)
Order VN's books in Russian.
A NOTE ON THE TEXTS:
I've decided not to list every individual edition of Nabokov's books, but rather to pick the best one from each batch. Thus most of the novels are the Vintage paperbacks -- reliable, affordable, and with rather snazzy covers. Two editions of note, The Library of America's and the Everyman's, are presented under separate headings.All summaries and commentaries are my own, and hence probably unreliable.
- The years in parentheses point to the first publication of the novel in book form. (Most of the Russian novels were serialized in emigré journals before appearing as books.) For the Russian novels, the first year points to its original publication, the second to the first time it made an appearance in English.
- FFL leads to the first few lines of the novel.
- COM leads to a highly idiosyncratic commentary on the novel.
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