Product Description

In Berlin there lived a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable and happy but one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress he loved. He was not loved in return, however, and his life ended in disaster. The original Russian text of this novel was published in 1933.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80108 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-25
• Original language: Russian
• 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

Vladimir Nabokov - Laughter in the Dark
When I read in the afterword that Nabokov once claimed this his "worst novel", I was amazed. I admit I've only read Pale Fire and Lolita (both superb, the first a fab intellectual piece of fictonal ambiguous jigsaw-puzzling, the second just flat-out superb), but this I enjoyed just as much. It's certainly doesn't strike one as being quite as zestily written as Lolita, or as devilish as Pale Fire, it is certainly a fine novel. I can only say this: Nabokov's worst novel stands head and shoulders above many other novelist's best. Laughter in the Dark is a clever, sprly written (Nabokov's sentences are, even if not the finest he would come to write, still remarkable, and sparkle with pixie-like intelligence) novel of one man's destruction at the hands of a young female mistress. It's melodramatic to say it, but the novel is worth reading almost for it's first paragraph alone.

It's sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, sometimes shocking, and there are certain bits which make you loath certain characters. There are times when it's chattery like a movie, times (the remarkable final scene), when it's the sightless equivalent of a silent film. I loved every page. It reads quickly, and he packs a lot into a very small space. He might have thought it his least accomplished novel, but it's also the most accesible of his I've read so far, and an ideal starting place. He's one of the centuries very finest writers, no question.

A gem: not one wasted word, not one woolly idea
Put aside a couple of days to read this mini-masterpiece about an ordinary man whose life falls apart because he has an affair with a deceitful hussy. The brilliance of the book lies in the fact that, while you know the anti-hero has brought about his own downfall, you still feel sorry for him by the end. Some scenes are comical, others are creepy. It's a must!

An underated masterpiece of personal ruin
The undisputed master of the opening lines of a novel, Nabokov does not fail to dent his reputation with Laughter in the Dark. Whether is be the intense beauty of the opening to Lolita, or the macabre tale that ushers into this offering, he stretches his reader's imagination and heart to level beyond utterance.

This is quite simply one of greatest tales to envoke despair in both the reader and the protagonist, Albinus. A life lost. Ruined. The betrayal of a wife, and the complex results that lay seige to the rest of his days.