Despair
Author
Original Work
Translator
Language
Year
1989
Publisher
Country
United States
Pages
212
ISBN
978-0679723431
The wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder. • “A beautiful mystery plot, not to be revealed.” – Newsweek “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” – John Updike “One of Mr. Nabokov’s finest, most challenging and provocative novels.” – The New York Times Despair’s protagonist, Hermann, is another masterly portrait in the fascinating gallery of living characters Vladmir Nabokov has given to world literature. In his pseudo wordliness, his odd genius, Hermann is one with such other heteroclitic neurotic Nabokovian creations as Humbert Humbert and Charles Kimbote. Rapt in his own reality, incapable of escaping or explicating it, he is as solitary in his abyss as Luzhin or Charlotte Haze of Lolita. Despair is illuminated throughout by the virtuosity and cunning wit that are Vladimir Nabokov’s hallmarks.— Google Books
Nabokov's translation was published in 1937. He revised the text for the 1965 second edition.
Press Reviews
- The Guardianby Chris Power · Apr 2024
His uncensored journals disclose a messier, more sexual, complex figure – and reveal much about the process of writing
- The Guardianby Gavin Francis · Apr 2015
‘Death-positive’ mortician Doughty explores attitudes to mortality in her enthralling memoir. Also reviewed: Brandy Schillace’s Death’s Summer Coat and GP Margaret McCartney’s Living With Dying
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