Bend Sinister.
by NABOKOV, Vladimir
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 007045728X
- ISBN 13
- 9780070457287
- Seller
-
Springfield, Massachusetts, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins. The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri. Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses--the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions--which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Grendel Books, ABAA/ILAB (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 99221
- Title
- Bend Sinister.
- Author
- NABOKOV, Vladimir
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 007045728X
- ISBN 13
- 9780070457287
- Publisher
- McGraw-Hill,
- Place of Publication
- NY:
- Date Published
- 1973
- Keywords
- 007045728X
Terms of Sale
Grendel Books, ABAA/ILAB
Please contact us to reserve books in advance. We will hold books for ten days, pending payment. All orders should be prepaid. Payment may be made by personal check, money order, or PayPal. Institutions can be billed to suit their needs. Massachusetts residents please add 6.25% sales tax. Domestic orders are shipped via the U.S. Postal Service (Priority Mail) starting at $15.00 for the first book. Shipping cost may be slightly higher depending on weight of book and shipping destination. Media Mail shipping rate is also available: $7.00 for the first book and $2.00 for each additional. Overseas orders are billed at cost. Books may be returned within 10 days for whatever reason, provided their condition has not been altered. We request that you notify us in advance of returns.
About the Seller
Grendel Books, ABAA/ILAB
About Grendel Books, ABAA/ILAB
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