The Eye (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Nabokov, Vladimir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140184821 ISBN 13: 9780140184822

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1992

Synopsis

Smurov, a fussily self-conscious Russian tutor, shoots himself after a humiliating beating by his mistress' husband. Unsure whether his suicide has been successful or not, Smurov drifts around Berlin, observing his acquaintances, but finds he can discover very little about his own life from the opinions of his distracted, confused fellow-émigrés. Nabokov's shortest novel, The Eye is both 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Synopsis:

Set in Berlin in the late 1920s, this novel follows the narrator in his pursuit of the real identity of Smurow who, like the narrator himself, puts in a regular appearance among a circle of acquaintances. As each person he meets reflects a different Smurow, so Smurow seems to change in character.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0140184821
• ISBN 13: 9780140184822
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96