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  • Published: 6 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9780141198033
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $24.99

Look at the Harlequins!




Nabokov's last published novel

'Look at the harlequins ... Play! Invent the world! Invent reality'. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre 'numerical nimbus syndrome'.

  • Published: 6 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9780141198033
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Vladimir Nabokov

One of the twentieth century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977) was born in St Petersburg, but left Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

His first novel in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, published in 1941. His other books include Ada or Ardor (1969), Laughter in the Dark (1933), Pale Fire (1962), the short story collection Details of a Sunset (1976) and Lolita (1955), his best-known novel.

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Praise for Look at the Harlequins!

He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language

Anthony Burgess

He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language