Volume 19, Number 8 · November 16, 1972
Tender Trousers
By Michael Wood
Transparent Things
by Vladimir Nabokov
McGraw-Hill, 104 pp., $5.95
Transparent Things is Nabokov's sixteenth novel, his seventh in English. In an odd sense it is a fresh start, since Nabokov's English novels, at least since Lolita (1955), have all been published in counterpoint or crossweave with the English versions of his earlier Russian novels: Invitation to a Beheading between Pnin (1957) and Pale Fire (1962); five Russian novels (The Gift, The Defense, The Eye, Despair, and King, Queen, Knave) between Pale Fire and Ada (1969); two more since Ada (Mary, Glory) to close the series of nine Russian novels—Laughter in the Dark was translated in 1938. The other two English novels, since I seem to find myself listing the whole oeuvre, are The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) and Bend Sinister (1947).
Review, 2689 words
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