Word: nabokovs
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...Deighton and John le Carre have written such spy stories, and so did the late Ian Fleming. The literary chromosomes of Graham Greene, C. P. Snow and Vladimir Nabokov are also traceable in this deliberate hybrid. But Anthony Burgess is not trying to imitate them. He has never written an unoriginal novel or an unlaminated one. Every Burgess surface conceals another, like Salome's veils, and they must all peel off to expose the author's naked core. In this exceptional book, subtitled An Eschatological Spy Novel, the reader quickly discovers that Burgess has much more...
...Nabokov's original translation in 1937 fell upon an indifferent market (he had yet to write Lolita, which was to make him famous). Most of the copies of Despair remained in the London publisher's custody; in 1940 a Luftwaffe bomb reduced them to confetti. Nabokov explains all this in a foreword to this revised translation-also his own -and enters his usual caveat against reading anything into the book that isn't there: "Despair, in kinship with the rest of my books, has no social comment to make, no message to bring in its teeth...
...crime is solved almost at once. Not for a moment does anyone mistake the dead man for his killer. Hiding out in France awaiting arrest, Hermann sets down in his last weeks the narrative that constitutes Nabokov's book, and rages at the perversity of the world, which will not accept at face value-refuses even to recognize-his work of deceptive...
...Since Nabokov fans seem irresistibly drawn toward his books in search of deep commentary, it would seem that the author's protestations for once ought to be respected. Accordingly, Despair rates as follows...
...general novel by Nabokov: soso...