No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer lasted longer than Vladimir Nabokov's. Véra Slonim shared his delight at the enchantment of life's trifles and literature's treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humour of any woman he had met. From their meeting in 1921, Vladimir's letters to his beloved Véra form a narrative arc that tells a forty-six year-long love story, and they are memorable in their entirety. Almost always playful, romantic, and pithy, the letters tell us much about the man and the writer; we see that Vladimir observed everything, from animals, faces, speech, and landscapes with genuine fascination.

This legendary novel has been the source of much anxiety and contention for Nabokov's fans - and family. The late Vladimir Nabokov requested that this unfinished work be destroyed, but his son, Dmitri, did not oblige, although neither did he allow the work to be published - until now. "The Original of Laura" is about a wonderfully large man called Philip Wild, married to a very promiscuous woman, and whose meditations concern the nature of death. The novel was complete in Nabokov's mind, though he died before he could translate his vision on to paper. It is hard, however, to imagine any scholars, Nabokov enthusiasts or literature lovers being disappointed by even these fragments.

When "Lolita" was first published in 1955 it created a sensation and established Nabokov as one of the most original prose writers of the twentieth century. This annotated edition, a revised and considerably expanded version of the 1970 edition, does full justice to the textual riches of "Lolita", illuminating the elaborate verbal textures and showing how they contribute to the novel's overall meaning. Alfred Appel, Jr. also provides fresh observations on the novel's artifice, games and verbal patternings and a delightful biographical vignette of Nabokov. The annotations themselves were prepared in consultation with Nabokov while newly identified allusions were confirmed by him during the final years of his life.

'Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest', Nabokov wrote of "King, Queen, Knave". Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. 'If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in' - Nabokov darts a glance to the reader - 'he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there'.

The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men's clothing emporium store.  Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife Martha.  Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle's condescension in his aunt's bed.

Nabokov's third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost: in Luzhin' s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent's unexpected and unpredictabke lines of assault.

В "Лекциях по русской литературе", впервые опубликованных в 1981 году, крупнейший русско-американский писатель ХХ века Владимир Набоков предстал перед читающей публикой, знавшей его главным образом как блистательного романиста, в иных, порой неожиданных ипостасях. Лекционные курсы "Мастера европейской прозы" и "Русская литература в переводах", подготовленные для студентов колледжа Уэлсли и Корнеллского университета, где писатель преподавал в 1940-1950-е годы, раскрыли в Набокове вдумчивого читателя, проницательного, дотошного и при этом весьма пристрастного исследователя, темпераментного и требовательного педагога - и вместе с тем подтвердили его репутацию виртуозного художника слова. На страницах этого тома Набоков-лектор дает своей аудитории превосходный урок "пристального чтения" произведений Гоголя, Тургенева, Достоевского, Толстого, Чехова и Горького - чтения, метод которого исчерпывающе описан самим автором: "Литературу, настоящую литературу, не стоит глотать залпом, как снадобье, полезное для сердца или ума, этого "желудка" души. Литературу надо принимать мелкими дозами, раздробив, раскрошив, размолов, - тогда вы почувствуете ее сладостное благоухание в глубине ладоней; ее нужно разгрызать, с наслаждением перекатывая языком во рту, - тогда и только тогда вы оцените по достоинству ее редкостный аромат и раздробленные, размельченные частицы вновь соединятся воедино в вашем сознании и обретут красоту целого, к которому вы подмешали чуточку собственной крови".

Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.

For the first time in English, Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest major work, written when he was only twenty-four: his only full-length play, introduced by Thomas Karshan and beautifully translated by Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy.
The Tragedy of Mister Morn was written in the winter of 1923–1924, when Nabokov was completely unknown. The five-act play—the story of an incognito king whose love for the wife of a banished revolutionary brings on the chaos the king has fought to prevent—was never published in Nabokov’s lifetime and lay in manuscript until it appeared in a Russian literary journal in 1997. It is an astonishingly precocious work, in exquisite verse, touching for the first time on what would become this great writer’s major themes: intense sexual desire and jealousy, the elusiveness of happiness, the power of the imagination, and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy. The play is Nabokov’s major response to the Russian Revolution, which he had lived through, but it approaches the events of 1917 above all through the prism of Shakespearean tragedy.

纳博科夫称《斩首之邀》为自拉自娱的小提琴。主人公辛辛纳特斯因一系列荒谬的“原因”被判死刑，却无法知道行刑的具体时间。他在狱中苦苦等待最后期限的到来，同时获救的希望却如心灵深处一颗湿润的种子，在周围各种奇异事件的引诱下暗暗萌发。

Penguin classcis Read Red

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, this is Nabokov's 'other' great love story; with some of Lolita's perversity and much more playfulness. Romance follows Ada and Van from their first childhood meeting through eight years of rapture, in a book which is regarded by many to be Nabokov's richest and most ambitious.

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude." an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers. an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws. who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed. he simply wills his executioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.

窺探納博科夫心目中
長大成人的「蘿莉塔」！
《蘿莉塔》作者死前要求焚毀、寫在138張資料卡上的傳奇遺稿，原稿重現！
納博科夫獨子──狄米崔專文引介，細敘「違抗父命出版遺稿」始末！
內容簡介
「這就是芙蘿拉。她兩隻深藍色的眼睛靠得很近，而她在二十幾歲想起往事時，嘴角總帶著冷酷。有關她的一切都是撲朔迷離，就連她的名字也被一個無比幸運的藝術家做為原型。雖然對藝術、對愛情、對夢與醒之間的差異，她都一無所知，然而如果你對她提出質疑，她可是會像一隻藍色扁頭毒蛇攻擊你。」
「在我的生命中，只有一個女孩既恐怖又溫柔；數百萬的讀者因為看了她情人寫的書而同情她。我叫她「女孩」，而不是女人、老婆或蕩婦－－如果用我的母語法文來寫，就是「fille」這個字：女孩，女兒，少女。」
學識淵博卻其貌不揚的中年醫生菲力普，在一場畢業典禮上偶然遇見了金髮女孩芙蘿拉（Flora），當時芙蘿拉的母親突然猝死倒地，當女孩曲膝去量母親脈博時，無意露出了黑色學士服下白皙的大腿，卻恰好被身旁的菲力普窺見了……
由於年齡上的巨大差距，兩人不久便在因利益結合的婚姻中漸行漸遠，青春正盛的芙蘿拉經常性紅杏出牆，總令菲力普感到屈辱。就在這時，菲力普收到一部名為《我的蘿拉》（My Laura）的小說，發現這部小說中女主角的模特兒居然正是他的妻子，書中盡是作家赤裸裸的渴慕與慾望。
面對這樣的婚姻，菲力普精神上開始出現異常，身為神經科醫生的他竟開始研究起如何「自我消除」的各種自殺方式，從他的腳趾開始，他不但逐漸化解了肉身，也解脫了被束縛的靈魂……
打開深鎖保險箱的天堂藍圖，
窺探「文字幻術師」納博科夫的靈光一閃，
未完成的經典，仍舊經典！
【《蘿拉的原型》的塵封記事】
1975 納博科夫在蝴蝶標本資料卡上，開始起草《蘿拉的原型》
1977 納博科夫病逝，死前交代妻兒將這部未完手稿焚毀，
往後三十年，除家人與一位不知名人士外，無人得以親見此書。
1991 納博科夫遺孀薇拉過世，這份塵封銀行保險箱三十年的書稿
轉交愛子狄米崔成為繼承人
2008 七十三歲的狄米崔宣布將出版《蘿拉的原型》
2009 《蘿拉的原型》英文版隆重出版，
「尊重作者意願vs. 服膺歷史價值」掀起歐美文化界廣大波瀾
【書封設計理念】
自從決定出版《蘿莉塔》與《蘿拉的原型》這兩本主題息息相關的「納博科夫雙書」之後，我們就一直希望能為它們創造一個富隱喻意涵的全新面貌。從一開始，我們便打定主意跳脫長久以來，各國書封以各式各樣的「小女孩」呈現《蘿莉塔》的慣例。考慮到原作者畢生對於蝴蝶的研究與熱愛，深深影響了他的文學創作。於是，我們將其未完成遺作《蘿拉的原型》定義為大師的「天才之蛹」，《蘿莉塔》則定義為大師筆下「最耀眼的蝴蝶」，決定了書封的主圖呈現，作者名稱則用近似「自然標本標籤」的灰色色塊鋪底，再以白色手寫體呈現。
整體用色上，我們力求「少女」神祕但禁忌的氣息，分別為兩書選了小女孩裙裝上的洋紅，以及蝶翼上一閃而逝的藍紫；封面折口上《蘿莉塔》壓了尼龍網襪一般的曖昧底紋，而《蘿拉的原型》則搭配透鏡般不斷膨脹、收縮的圖紋，表現文字盡頭無窮的詮釋與想像。
不知道乘坐在蝴蝶翅膀上離世的大師，如果看到這兩本書的封面，會不會願意眨眨他一貫狡獪機敏的眼？

我是個怪物，但是我愛妳；
我可鄙、殘忍、一無是處，但是我愛妳，我愛妳……
我的蘿莉塔。
「少女學」的代表之作，當代「蘿莉風潮」的開山始祖
從震驚世界的5國禁書，到20世紀最偉大的文學經典
全新中譯本
特別收錄：「《蘿莉塔》橫跨美國公路之旅地圖」
特別取得德國知名納博科夫學者授權，將書中男主角帶著孤女蘿莉塔長達27,000英里、橫跨48州的美國公路漂泊之旅的路線，繪製成地圖，不僅凸顯《蘿莉塔》作為「公路小說」先驅的重要地位，也讓讀者體驗納博科夫筆下一九四○年代的美國風情！
內容簡介
Lolita
【名詞】 指性早熟的年輕女孩。
【出處】 來自弗拉基米爾．納博科夫一九五八年出版之小說《蘿莉塔》裡的同名角色。
－－《牛津英語辭典》
「蘿莉塔，我生命的光芒、我胯下的烈火，我的罪，我的魂。蘿－莉－塔：舌尖從上顎下滑三步，第三步，在牙齒上輕輕點叩。蘿，莉，塔。
清晨時，她是蘿，平凡無奇的小蘿，四呎十吋高，只穿一隻襪子；身穿寬鬆長褲時，她是蘿拉；在學校她是朵莉；正式簽名時她是朵拉芮絲。
然而，在我懷抱裡，她永遠都是蘿莉塔。」
年屆四十的歐裔文學教授韓伯特，在美國小鎮邂逅了寡婦房東的十二歲女兒「蘿莉塔」，深深為少女那既孩子氣、又充滿妖異魅力的矛盾特質所著迷。於是他接近少女寂寞的寡母夏綠蒂、娶她為妻，理所當然成為了少女的繼父。
正當韓伯特為自己瘋狂的幻想與佔有慾感到罪惡，另一方面又處心積慮、自我欺騙地接近少女時，夏綠蒂偶然發現韓伯特的祕密日記，得知了丈夫的意圖，她在激烈爭執中衝出門外，卻意外車禍身亡。
於是，韓伯特帶著孤女蘿莉塔展開橫跨美國的漂泊之旅，而逐漸成長的蘿莉塔一方面在誘惑中採取主動，另一方面卻又暗自設法逃離繼父扭曲的掌控。這宿命中互相綑縛的兩人，便一路開向了萬劫不復的毀滅終點……
在伍迪艾倫的電影《曼哈頓》中，
在瑪莉蓮曼森的單曲〈心形眼鏡〉裡，
在躍動的日本動漫畫遊戲中，在迷幻的時尚伸展台上，
在德黑蘭的女子讀書俱樂部裡，
我們一次又一次，聽見《蘿莉塔》。
這一次，讓我們重新閱讀它。
【《蘿莉塔》出版大事記】
1954 遭美國五大出版社拒絕出版，被迫轉往法國奧林匹亞出版社發行
1955 出版後，格雷安‧葛林讚揚為當年度最好的三本書之一，引起廣泛撻伐
1956 於英國、法國、阿根廷、紐西蘭、南非相繼遭禁
1958 在美國上市三週內，成為繼《飄》之後銷售最快的作品
1962 名導庫柏力克在嚴苛電影審查制度下，將其改拍成經典名片
1979 「蘿莉塔」風格服飾在日本蔚為風尚，
逐漸形成動漫畫界、同人界重要次文化
1998 高踞美國當代圖書館「二十世紀百大英文小說」第四位經典之作
【書封設計理念】
自從決定出版《蘿莉塔》與《蘿拉的原型》這兩本主題息息相關的「納博科夫雙書」之後，我們就一直希望能為它們創造一個富隱喻意涵的全新面貌。從一開始，我們便打定主意跳脫長久以來，各國書封以各式各樣的「小女孩」呈現《蘿莉塔》的慣例。考慮到原作者畢生對於蝴蝶的研究與熱愛，深深影響了他的文學創作。於是，我們將其未完成遺作《蘿拉的原型》定義為大師的「天才之蛹」，《蘿莉塔》則定義為大師筆下「最耀眼的蝴蝶」，決定了書封的主圖呈現，作者名稱則用近似「自然標本標籤」的灰色色塊鋪底，再以白色手寫體呈現。
整體用色上，我們力求「少女」神祕但禁忌的氣息，分別為兩書選了小女孩裙裝上的洋紅，以及蝶翼上一閃而逝的藍紫；封面折口上《蘿莉塔》壓了尼龍網襪一般的曖昧底紋，而《蘿拉的原型》則搭配透鏡般不斷膨脹、收縮的圖紋，表現文字盡頭無窮的詮釋與想像。
不知道乘坐在蝴蝶翅膀上離世的大師，如果看到這兩本書的封面，會不會願意眨眨他一貫狡獪機敏的眼？

"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story -- subtle, intricate, leading to a tantalizing climax -- about the mysterious life of a famous writer. Many people knew things about Sebastian Knight as a distinguished novelist, but probably fewer than a dozen knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career, the second one in such a disastrous way. After Knight's death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with a few scanty clues in the novelist's private papers. His search proves to be a story as intriguing as any of his subject's own novels, as baffling, and, in the end, as uniquely rewarding.