Details Regarding Books King, Queen, Knave
| Title | : | King, Queen, Knave |
| Author | : | Vladimir Nabokov |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 275 pages |
| Published | : | 2010 by Penguin Books (first published 1928) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Russia. Classics. Literature. Russian Literature. Novels |
Vladimir Nabokov
Paperback | Pages: 275 pages Rating: 3.81 | 3945 Users | 264 Reviews
Representaion Concering Books King, Queen, Knave
'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 ad 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 up here and there'.
Describe Books Supposing King, Queen, Knave
| Original Title: | Король, дама, валет |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Regarding Books King, Queen, Knave
Ratings: 3.81 From 3945 Users | 264 ReviewsCriticism Regarding Books King, Queen, Knave
Maybe it's chauvinistic provincialism on my part, but I find Nabokov less interesting when his stories take place in foreign countries. I just didn't find this novel as enjoyable as his later American books. Maybe the humor doesn't travel well, but there were times when this book was a slog to get through.I love how even the most despicable of characters is rendered so human by Nabokov. Their actions and senses are real. You can despise them for eternity but you still keep turning the pages, your mind still coming back to them.Take for instance Martha in King, Queen, Knave. She's the cold wife of a lively and boisterous businessman named Dreyer. Dreyer has a poor nephew named Franz, our main character, and when his nephew is sent to be employed by Dreyer he and Martha begin a love affair.Sneaked
Upon opening Vladimir Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave (translated from the Russian by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author), I was immediately struck by the degree to which certain passages reminded me of Proust. I consider Nabokov to be one of my favorite authors, and yet somehow this had never occurred to me. Maybe, I thought, the similarity is particularly pronounced in this novel, which I had never read before? But while this may be, I quickly realized that, previous to King, Queen,
Nabokov's second novel and also my second Nabokov novel. I was a little disappointed after reading Lolita, I thought it was a bit overrated, beautifully written but the story was too straight/simple and by the end it had me thinking ~ so what? Kind of like how I feel about this book. It's amazing how it's written, no doubt how talented the guy is but the story was meh. This is only my second Nabokov book but I kind of get the feeling that while having a strong style the guy isn't good at writing
An absence of morality would be understating the spiritual content of the characters in this triangle of marital infidelity. They only want. They only will. Out of those desires comes a funny, intricate farce in which the things of this world possess more humanity than the humans. Nabokov's observations stun. In the scenes he paints, he misses nothing. Dreyer, the businessman and cuckhold, walking by a seaside rack of picture postcards:"The most frequent object of their derision was human
This started out so promising, leaving me comparing the prose to Willa Cather as both authors were working their own strained relationships to 1920's modernity, both with some focus on the railways. Here Nabokov opens by capturing the experience of train travel, and evokes that world encapsulated by a rocking confined metal box hurtling through moving fields for hours on end. Then, as Franz first sees Berlin without his glasses, the prose overdoes itself: "Once in the street he was engulfed in
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