ACCLAIM FOR
The Stories
of
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
“[This collection] brings the reader closer to his magic.… Those who know Nabokov the novelist and have forgotten that Nabokov the story writer exists now have a precious gift in their hands.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“His English is an extraordinary instrument, at once infinitely delicate and muscularly robust: no other writer of our time, not even Joyce, can catch the shifting play of the world’s light and shade as he does.”
—Boston Globe
“These stories are wonders of the English language.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“It startles, then it provokes, and finally it satisfies in a way that a more domesticated fiction cannot.… An enduring tribute to Nabokov’s ability to charm … and inspire.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“They offer a startling, cloudless view of a writer’s development.… The effect of such felicities en masse is not only addictive; they point to the finesse of Nabokov’s ear [and] to the extreme and unembarrassable weirdness of his invention, the plain flights of his fancy.”
—The New Yorker
“Glorious.… Should please Nabokov’s devoted admirers and new readers, too.… Early story or late, the tales all read as rich as smoky dark chocolates.”
—Denver Post
“Wonderful.… This rich and satisfying book shows how much is lacking in the pale and tremulous fiction of the ’90s.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A major literary event.… These works display the same high level of sensibility, acute perception, sharp wit and stylistic legerdemain that is the recognized signature of Nabokov the novelist.”
—Kansas City Star
“They steam with fresh memories and tussle and toy with fate’s wicked irony.… Redemption shimmers in Nabokov’s darkly turbulent work.”
—Newsday
“Demonstrates his dazzling powers of description, his tender evocation of the past, and his ability to focus on odd angles of consciousness.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“It leaves you open-mouthed.”
—Newsweek
“These stories would delight anyone for whom humanity and its ideas and foibles are truly important.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“This is genius.… Generously sculpted sentences plunge but never stumble toward the invariably original image, letting language push logic as far as it can go without calling attention to itself.”
—Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram
“No writer has expressed more vividly, or explored with greater variety and power, the psychic imperative to give shape and meaning to one’s experience and thereby understand and endure it.”
—Washington Times