In Vladimir Nabokov's first person short story "Cloud, Castle, Lake," Russian refugee Vasili Ivanovich wins a ticket for an excursion out of Berlin and into the countryside. Though he is initially disinterested in leaving the city, he begins imagining into the trip's possibilities, and becomes convinced the journey will beget some amorphous happiness. While on the train with his group of fellow travelers, however, Vasili Ivanovich becomes the object of their ridicule and harassment. Vasili Ivanovich desperately attempts to keep his hopefulness alive despite the group's brutality. The short story explores themes including marginalization and hope.
The Russian-born American poet, fiction writer, critic, and butterfly expert Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), one of the most highly acclaimed novelists of his time, was noted for his sensuous and lyrica...
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Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian émigré who began writing in English in middle age, is considered one of the most brilliant and inventive writers of the twentieth century. A trilingua...
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Biography EssayVladimir Nabokov, one of the most important world novelists of the twentieth century, was almost unique in changing languages in mid career, from Russian to English. Not identified with...
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It is a paradox that Vladimir Nabokov's life and career dramatically involved him in the most powerful socio-historical currents of the twentieth century: Marxist revolution, exile, politics, the sexu...
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Vladimir Nabokov is one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century--and a thoroughly international one whose work is as carefully read in France, Germany, Japan, and Finland as in his ho...
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Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov wrote novels, short stories, poems, translations, and literary criticism. His novels firmly established him as one of the best stylists of the twentieth centur...
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