King, Queen, Knave - Hardcover

Vladimir Nabokov

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0141196920 ISBN 13: 9780141196923

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2012

Synopsis

Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest, Nabokov wrote of "King, Queen, Knave". Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped and mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. "If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in" - Nabokov darts a glance to the reader - "he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there..."

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men's clothing emporium store. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle's condescension in his aunt's bed.

About the Author:

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was one of the great writers of the twentieth century, as well as a translator and lepidopterist. His works include, from the Russian novels, The Luzhin Defense and The Gift; from the English novels, Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire and Ada; the autobiographical Speak, Memory; translations of Alice in Wonderland into Russian and Eugene Onegin into English; and lectures on literature. All of the fiction and Speak, Memory are published in Penguin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0141196920
• ISBN 13: 9780141196923
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352