Novellas

In The Eye, a fussily self-conscious Russian tutor shoots himself after a humiliating beating by his mistress' husband. There follows a satirical detective story and a wonderfully layered exploration of identity, appearance and the loss of self in a world of word-play and confusion. Nabokov described The Enchanter, written in Paris in 1939, as 'the first little throb of Lolita'. The plot is similar: a middle-aged man wedding an unattractive widow in order to indulge his paedophilic obsession with her daughter. The legendary The Original of Laura has been the source of much anxiety and contention for Nabokov's fans - and family. The late Vladimir Nabokov requested that this unfinished work be destroyed, but his son, Dmitri, eventually took the decision to publish it many years later. The novel was complete in Nabokov's mind, though he died before he could translate his vision on to paper. It is hard, however, to imagine any scholars, Nabokov enthusiasts or literature lovers being disappointed by even these fragments. These three works make up the latest in the major new beautiful hardback series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.