Books by Vladimir Nabokov

“The Luzhin Defense is far and away the best novel written about chess players. It deals with chess and madness, which is an intriguing topic, because it’s often said that chess grandmasters have a propensity to insanity. Statistically, it’s probably not true, but, nonetheless, people think about Fischer, they think about Steinitz, the first undisputed world champion who went insane, and there were others as well, such as Morphy and Rubinstein. The great mystery to me, which this book touches on, is that it’s often said that these people are driven mad by chess, when actually it might have been the other way around – chess was the only thing that kept them from going off the deep end. It’s when they get away from chess, or try to break away from it, that their characters disintegrate. Fischer’s lunacy, if that’s what it was, broke out in full force when he abandoned playing the game. Within chess he was sublimely rational. They are often people who can be slightly awkward outside chess, but in chess are completely balanced.” Read more...

The Best Books About Chess

Dominic Lawson, Journalist

“I still think it’s one of the most beautiful memoirs ever written. Although it’s not about the Russian revolution as such, it is permeated with a sense of loss and exile, as are all of Nabokov’s books. He evokes gorgeous countryside scenes of pre-revolutionary Russia, but at the same time has some distance from it – he recognises the awfulness of what he at one point calls his “rather appalling country” at the same time.” Read more...

The best books on Memoirs of Communism

Anne Applebaum, Historian

“What’s spectacular for me is the triumph of the humour over his loathsomeness. You can almost sympathise with his compulsive stream of thought, and if you can’t, you can at least admit to being entertained. Nabokov’s wry reading of America and of Humbert manages to overcome much of what’s repellent in the book.” Read more...

The best books on Worry

Steven Amsterdam, Novelist

“One thing I was really torn on was that I initially wanted to include an American novel from a writer born outside the country, because some of the clearest-eyed books about America come from these writers. Right up until late I had Pnin (1957) on the list, because I don’t think anyone else describes America like Nabokov does. I’ve always perceived the American landscape in Nabokov as having the qualities of a diorama: a façade of buildings, roads and cars that is scrupulously presented, and where the relations between every visible object are very clear and well-defined. And then threaded through that you have this seam of psychological chaos that is never fully absorbed into the materials of that landscape; and the tension that is produced, which I suppose could also be one definition of the immigrant writer’s experience, is where the work comes from.” Read more...

The Best 20th-Century American Novels

David Hering,

“I love Glory and am in a minority group among Nabokov fans in that……. Glory is a Russian novel written in Berlin, originally serialised in an émigré quarterly, and many years later translated into English by Dmitri Nabokov and his father – very well translated, I think.” Read more...

Best Vladimir Nabokov Books

Maxim D Shrayer, Literary Scholar

“This is my favourite collection, and a lot of my own work on Nabokov deals with the stories. About 60 of them were written in Russian, ten in English. They cover four decades of Nabokov’s literary life and are representative of his dynamic as a writer both in Russian and in English, and as both a European and an American émigré. If you want to see his various predilections, the aesthetics and politics of Nabokov’s work, then the stories are a great place to go. Nabokov leaves a mark on the genre – some have argued that they are among the very best Russian, European, American short stories ever written. They are a great example of late, blazing modernism.” Read more...

Best Vladimir Nabokov Books

Maxim D Shrayer, Literary Scholar