The Luzhin Defense
Nabokov's third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness.
As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost: in Luzhin' s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent's unexpected and unpredictabke lines of assault.
Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.
Think, Write, Speak
Vladimir Nabokov; Edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy
Letters to Véra
Vladimir Nabokov
The Original of Laura
Vladimir Nabokov
Selected Poems of Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov; Edited by Thomas Karshan
Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov; Introduction by David Lodge
Vintage Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov; Introduction by Brian Boyd
Lolita: A Screenplay
Vladimir Nabokov
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov; Introduction by Martin Amis
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov; Translated by Vladimir Nabokov and Dmitri Nabokov; Introduction by T. J. Binyon
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov; Introduction by Richard Rorty
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Vladimir Nabokov
Glory
Vladimir Nabokov
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann
The Thinking Heart
David Grossman
Voices of the Fallen Heroes
Yukio Mishima
Question 7
Richard Flanagan
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham
Giovanni's Room (Deluxe Edition)
James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Deluxe Edition)
James Baldwin
If Beale Street Could Talk (Deluxe Edition)
James Baldwin
Tomás Nevinson
Javier Marías
Knight's Gambit
William Faulkner
Answered Prayers
Truman Capote
The Rainbow
Yasunari Kawabata
The Passenger
Cormac McCarthy
Stella Maris
Cormac McCarthy