Laughter in the Dark

Vladimir 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 anti-Semitism 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 18 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. His most notable works include 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.

出版者:Vintage

作者:Vladimir Nabokov

页数:304

出版时间:1989-12-17

价格:USD 15.95

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780679724506

图书标签:NabokovVladimirNabokov纳博科夫英文美国小说俄国长篇小说

Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star herself. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.

用户评价

三流爱情故事的另一种可能。手法有趣，文笔迷人。

虽然每个人物都不喜欢，但越到后面越好看，以为故事俗烂，但Nabokov永远让你无法意料。不知道是不是英文翻译的原因，文字表达十分直接简单

This is actually so good. Brutally funny, classy, somewhat similar to a film noir (with a femme fatale figure). A wonderful read.

纳博科夫的狡黠在于每每在故事坠落的边缘，盲人都“视而不见”，愚钝但恰到好处地稳稳停住脚步。三人住进旅馆开始，句句都是高潮。

丑陋、无情