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 Montreaux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
"Bits and pieces of Laura will beckon and beguile Nabokov fans, who
will find many of the author’s perennial themes and obsessions
percolating through the story of Philip.... In these pages readers
will find bright flashes of Nabokovian wordplay and surreal,
Magritte-like descriptions." —The New York Times
"Nabokov's last metafictive parable. . . . One of the most
interesting short stories Nabokov never wrote." —San Francisco
Chronicle
"Tantalizing, fascinating. . . . A generous gift to readers. . . .
Filled with sly wit and memorable images." —The Christian Science
Monitor
"A unique chance to see the master out of control. . . . It's like
seeing an unfinished Michelangelo sculpture--one of those rough,
half-formed giants straining to step out of its marble block. It's
even more powerful, to a different part of the brain, than the
polish of a David or a Lolita." —New York magazine
"A beautifully printed objet d'art in its own right, the book of
previously unpublished writings offers a thrilling insight into the
great writer's creative process, 28 years after his death." —The
Kansas City Star
"This is no ordinary manuscript. . . . The Original of Laura is an
astonishingly accurate representation of a genius' shards. But, my
God, what shards these are. What devotee of Nabokov, much less mere
reader, could possibly regret Dmitri Nabokov's decision to give us
this gift? . . . What we have is a novelistic genius's fever
dream—one of the great literary talents of his century aswirl with
ideas and last thoughts." —The Buffalo News
“Undeniably handsome. . . . Nabokov’s ornate vocabulary is
predictably fun, especially when applied to body parts.” —The
Guardian (London)
“The more I reread it, the more I discover and admire. . . . His
style may be most extraordinary not so much as prose but as story.
. . . For centuries, I predict, scholars of narrative will focus on
the opening chapter of The Original of Laura as proof of the new
finds to be made in fiction—in characterization, setting, action,
speech, narration.” –Brian Boyd, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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