Shakespeare's tragedy Othello (1604) lends Nabokov's story its title and is widely regarded as one of the playwright's greatest works. Like "That in Aleppo Once . . .," Othello concerns the effects of jealousy on a married man's mind.

The Winter's Tale (1610), one of Shakespeare's late romances, concerns Leontes, a king whose jealousy of his innocent wife almost destroys her and her daughter. Unlike Othello, however, Leontes is saved from his own passions before they destroy himself and his family.

Nabokov's most famous novel, Lolita (1955), follows the exploits of Humbert Humbert, a pervert whose love for the "nymphet" Dolores Haze provokes great jealousy, confusion, and death.

Nabokov's 1947 novel Bend Sinister is a dark, satirical portrait of a totalitarian state (in some ways like the Nazis) that, in the name of equality and progress, destroys free thinking.

Speak, Memory (1951; revised 1966), Nabokov's autobiography, traces his development...