Volume 3, Number 11 · January 14, 1965
Nabokov's Game
By Robert M. Adams
The Defense
by Vladimir Nabokov, Translated from the Russian in collaboration with the author by Michael Scammel
Putnam, 256 pp., $5.00
The uncovering of the enigmatic V. Sirin proceeds. Three novels and three volumes of short stories, to be sure, remain in the original Russian, but publication of The Defense (originally, and better, titled The Luzhin Defense when it first came out in 1929) now brings to five the number of novels which appeared under Vladimir Nabokov's favorite pseudonym, and which, more than thirty years later, have reappeared in a new language under his own name. Among his other distinctions, it appears, Nabokov is one of our more eminent recidivists. To have a buried career blossoming afresh, while he proceeds with another, on the upper level as it were, is a special and delightful destiny.
Review, 1661 words
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