Description

The traditional book from the writer of Lolita, brilliantly portraying one man's wreck through betrayal. and love "Once-Upon a period there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was wealthy, respected, pleased; oneday he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; wasn't loved; and his life ended in tragedy." Hence commences Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter at nighttime; this, the writer informs us, may be the entire story—except he starts from below, together with his characteristic stunning ability and paradox, and superbly becomes a myth right into a relaxing, unique book of folly and damage. Amidst a Weimar-era milieu of silent movie celebrities, designers, and applicants, Nabokov produces a cruel masterpiece as Albinus, an ageing critic, falls victim to their own wishes, to his young mistress, and to Axel Rex, the scheming rival on her affections who discovers his greatest pleasure in the problem of others. Printed first in Euro as Kamera Obskura in 1932, this book seemed in Nabokov's own English translation six decades later.