Nabokov's Dozen: Thirteen Stories

A BAKER'S DOZEN of fiction by a modern master that spans the twentieth century from the last days of the Czars, to the Bolshevik Revolution, Nazi Germany, and contemporary middle-class America. Looking back nostalgically to the past and ahead to the future age of scientific miracles, Vladimir Nabokov makes each of the characters in these stories—young lovers, a forgotten poet, a Russian movie producer, a tragic butterfly collector—come vividly alive.    •    •From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales--eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time--display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination. They range from sprightly fables to bittersweet tales of loss, from claustrophobic exercises in horror to a connoisseur's samplings of the table of human folly. Read as a whole, Nabokov's Dozen offers and intoxicating draft of the master's genius, his devious wit, and his ability to turn language into an instrument of ecstasy.From the Trade Paperback edition.