Product Description

Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel is the dazzling story of the coarse, strange yet oddly endearing chess-playing genius Luzhin. Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood and rising to the rank of International Grandmaster, Luzhin develops a lyrical passion for chess that renders the real world a phantom. As he confronts the fiery, swift-swooping Italian Grandmaster Turati, he brings into play his carefully devised defence. Making masterly play of metaphor and imagery, The Luzhin Defense is the book that, of his early works, Nabokov felt ‘contains and diffuses the greatest warmth’.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45532 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-05
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
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 émigré writers. He died in 1977.

Customer Reviews

A grand masterpiece
The Luzhin Defence is the story of a little boy who loses his first name, and becomes a great genius who ultimately loses everything. It is a biography, spanning A. Luzhin's early childhood recollections; his isolation from society and the love affair that breaks temporarily through that; and his development to a Grandmaster inexorably moving towards the most crucial confrontation of his career.

Nabokov skilfully portrays Luzhin's life becoming like a reflection trapped between two mirrors, finally coming to an inevitable vanishing point. The moments in his life begin to echo and re-echo previous moments, like some recurring melody in the violin music that is a motif in the novel. His actions are like moves in a chess game, particularly in the first half of the novel, where the moments Nabokov castles, then brings out his queen, can be pinpointed.

Nabokov writes about his characters with such elusive, unsentimental humanity, that the reader is infused with warmth or compassion for them all.

And of course, as ever, the real reason for reading Nabokov is the exquisite rapture of his language. He realises worlds so deeply and so richly through the fullness of his language that sometimes I have even felt that the 'real' world could risk seeming like a faded facsimile in comparison.

Though completely different in style - completely - this book at times reminded me of Samuel Beckett's work, in that in flashes it circumscribes the outer reaches of existential loneliness.

I did not give this novel 5 stars because the endgame of the novel is not so skilfully realised as the first two thirds, and slightly loses pace.

It isn't as scintillatingly brilliant as Lolita, or Pale Fire....but still - a superb novel.

A sparkling study of the reconciliation of genius and love
The Luzhin Defense is Nabokov's first masterpiece, written in Russian when he lived as an emigre in Berlin. Luzhin is a brilliant and all absorbed chess player, unable to relate to life outside his passion. Following a brief pre-chess childhood, the memories of which are crisply and beautifully described, he avoids confrontation with the world through a successful chess career. Until, that is, he meets the unnamed woman who will become his wife. Following a nervous breakdown, Luzhin fails to reconcile his wife's loving tenderness and chess. Whilst the first half is consummately written, the second half of the book is less successful. Luzhin is both unworldly and yet strangely sensitive to the world around him. His absorption in his chess does not combine faithfully with his obsession with his own past. Recently married, Nabokov thought he could see the operations of fate working to bring about his happiness with Vera. In the 'Luzhin Defense' he attempts to invert the machinations of benign fate; Luzhin can only see its forces ganging up and working against him. This is a brilliant theme which Nabokov went on to push much further. In this novel, however, he failed to marry his literary creation and metaphysical subtext.

A Knight & His Queen
Given the popular view of Chess as mechanical & abstract, this novel radiates surprising warmth. Perhaps because the story is not *only* about Chess. It's also about what might appear a perfect contrast to the world of abstract games: near-unconditional love between two living humans.

The central protagonist, Luzhin, grows up a Chess prodigy, becomes a top world player, meets the love of his life, a woman of character who loves him back despite his appalling health, & uncouth traits. Their union lasts for a while, until - but you should read the rest.

Now there's no escaping that the book turns around the axis of Chess. Though Nabokov always evades the purely technical, I have a hard time pushing the book to people who are not at least interested in gaming in the most general terms, & perhaps know the basics of Chess (this is roughly my own case). Much of the story deals with how its main character, within the realm of Chess, is a dancer in the greatest Russian tradition, & to appreciate the full beauty of this, however indirectly conveyed by Nabokov's elegant style, some appreciation for abstract games are an asset.

Still, it's in the real, earthy & fleshy world that one woman instantly recognizes our hero as master of an exalted craft. When he later runs into trouble, she is true to him, striving to transform him - less for her own comfort than out of compassion, & for his survival. Her love, & his appreciation of it, are moving. Though the novel does lose a little pace towards the end, this is more than made up for by calm, incandescent splendour. A Love Story, probably unreadable if it weren't so intelligently written.