Product Description

The state has been recently taken over and is being run by the tyrannical and philistine ‘Average Man’ party. Under the slogans of equality and happiness for all, it has done away with individualism and freedom of thought. Only John Krug, a brilliant philosopher, stands up to the regime. His antagonist, the leader of the new party, is his old school enemy, Paduk – known as the ‘Toad’. Grieving over his wife’s recent death, Krug is at first dismissive of Paduk’s activities and sees no threat in them. But the sinister machine which Paduk has set in motion may prove stronger than the individual, stronger even than the grotesque ‘Toad’ himself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76994 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg in 1899, but he left Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power. His family moved to England for a brief spell and finally settled in Berlin. His first novel in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, published in 1941. His other books include Ada, Laughter in the Dark, Details of a Sunset and Lolita, his best-known novel. Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland in 1977.

Customer Reviews

A dark and moody journey through political corruption
One must have respect for Nabokov- the man who is famed for turning a smutty subject such as is found in 'Lolita' into a beautiful and heart-breaking account of an unrequited romance is a man who has perfected the art of storytelling; who knows how to capture an audience and makes them see through new and wider eyes. In 'Bend Sinister' you will find Nabokov's same love of words, his same courtship of them, that makes his work not merely an account of a plot, but a story with which a reader can fall into, can explore like a living world that moves and writhes in its own emotions. However, do not be prepared for another 'Lolita'- the story handles very different subject matter in a very different, political tone; a man whose values oppose the state, and how the state can tempt, revolt, exhile and eventually break an individual who does not comply, in this case a philosophy lecturer called Krug. This is an appropriate career for the protagonist, as this book is laden with thought and theory. I found, personally, that in reading the book it ended rather abruptly, that perhaps a building-up, a rising of tension, was nurtured in the book that never truly came about; or perhaps this is merely the truth in how we all perceive life. Nabokovians will find this book interesting, as it brings yet another colour to the portrait of a truly great and intriguing writer. For those of you who are a novice to the god of all things nymphet, I suggest you start with his more famous work, 'Lolita' and then give this one a go. Overall, a linguistically striking read, as you would expect from Vladimir.

A shimmering and haunting masterpiece (and NOT satire)
In 'Bend Sinister' is crystallized the delicate interplay of the creator and the created, so important to Nabokov's metaphysics. Within these few pages, layer upon layer of the 'slippery sophism' of Krug's immortality is explored; Nabokov describes the intimate relationship between man's consciousness and memories with heart-rending pathos only rivalled in 'Pnin'. Krug is an eminent philosopher and the range and brilliance of his thought is amply attested in the philosophical passages, some frivolous, some more serious. But primarily he is a private individual with an infinity of love contained in his soul, condemned to lose his beloved wife and child. Unable to bear the loss of his wife, following a failed operation, he ignores the dangers of the Toad's fearsome totalitarian regime, gradually encroaching on his life. Yet even the privacy of his grief is not allowed to remain sacrosanct. Desperate for the international recognition Krug's eminent approval would bring, the State relentlessly, and blunderingly, hounds him. The tragic culmination of the novel, disturbingly reminiscent of only recently uncovered Nazi atrocities, is only relieved by madness bestowed on Krug by his benevolent creator. This is Nabokov's dazzling study of the tension between the individual, in love with life, and the misguided notions of the common good.

Painful Reading
Nabokov can turn a sentence with the best of them, Lolita is the supreme example of this, but the simple act of telling a story seems almost beyond him. He makes the potentially great premise in Bend Sinister (about a dystopian, tyrant state) come across as less than pedestrian. This book is, for reasons unknown, regarded as a classic. It most certainly is not. It has no narrative drive, its characters, never a strong point in Nabokov third person narratives, are mere cyphers, and his attempts at humour, with the exception of where Krug's child is misplaced, fail. The books biggest failing is its satirical sideswipes. In his preface Nabokov attacks George Orwell and calls him 'mediocre'. True, Orwell couldn't turn a sentence with anything approaching the flair, or invention, of Nabokov but he managed to write a satire on Tyranny that will long outlive the empty, stylized posturings of a writer waaaaaay off form. I tried to like this novel, I really did, but just as things are starting to look bright (the section involving the misplacing of Krug's child) Nabokov spoils everything by ending the novel with the ultimate example of author intrusion, a stylistic device loved by surrealists because it masks literary laziness, making it seem 'ironic'. If there is an irony in this novel it is merely the fact that it is deemed to be a classic. This is a book for Nabokov completists only, for everybody else: avoid like the plague.