Book description
The darkly comic Transparent Things, one of Nabokov's
final books, traces the bleak life of Hugh Person through murder,
madness, prison and trips to Switzerland. One of these was the last
journey his father ever took; on another, having been sent to
ingratiate himself with a distinguished novelist, he met his future
wife. Nabokov's brilliant short novel sinks into the transparent
things of the world that surround this one Person, to the silent
histories they carry.
Remarkable even in Nabokov's work for its depth and lyricism,
Transparent Things is a small, experimental marvel of
memories and dreams, both sentimental and malign.
Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author
of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.
Vladimir Nabokov was born in 1899 in St Petersburg. He wrote his
first literary works in Russian, but rose to international prominence as
a masterly prose stylist for the novels he composed in English, most
famously,
Lolita
. Between 1923 and 1940 he published novels, short stories, plays, poems
and translations in the Russian language and established himself as one
of the most outstanding Russian migr writers. He died in 1977.
