Bookbot

Pavel Dominik

    Pale fire : a novel
    Glory
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    Povídky / 2 1930-1937
    Tremendous Trifles
    Kaleidoscope and Other Short Stories
    • Takes us into the prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. schovat popis

      Penguin Modern Classics: Invitation to Beheading2025
      4,0
    • Glory

      • 192bladzijden
      • 7 uur lezen

      A novel by the author of Mary, The Eye, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Transparent Things and Lolita.

      Glory2021
      4,2
    • The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

      • 173bladzijden
      • 7 uur lezen

      In a letter to Edmund Wilson in 1941, Vladimir Nabokov expressed his delight that Wilson enjoyed his first novel in English, written five years earlier in a small Parisian bathroom. Despite its modest origins, this work showcases Nabokov's mastery of language and explores themes of identity. The story revolves around Sebastian Knight, a Russian novelist whose complex relationship with language mirrors Nabokov's own. The narrative is driven by Sebastian's half-brother, who seeks to piece together the life of this enigmatic figure. Although he acknowledges that Sebastian's life lacks the drama of his literary style, he finds even the simplest facts elusive. The narrator delves into Sebastian's creative struggles, articulating the painful gap between thought and expression—a common challenge for writers. The quest for a verbal equivalent of Sebastian's existence proves daunting, yet the narrator achieves a poignant connection with his subject by the book's end, reflecting a fluid understanding of identity. Rich in prose and insight, this novel is essential reading and arguably the finest work ever crafted on a bidet.

      The Real Life of Sebastian Knight2018
      4,0
    • Neznámí pachatelé vyhodí do vzduchu jachtu profesora Meyera. Při výbuchu zahynou tři lidé, mezi nimi profesorova neteř, která se před nedávnem vdala. Vypátrat viníky se snaží dlouholetý profesorův přítel Travis McGee, který postupně shromažďuje fakta a rozplétá složitý příběh podvodníka. Nakonec odhaluje prohnaného několikanásobného vraha, jenž pod různými jmény sváděl a zabíjel ženy, aby získal jejich peníze.

      Skořicová pleť2018
      3,7
    • Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist.  It tells a love story troubled by incest.  But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue.   Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously  sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

      Ada Or Ardor2015
      4,2
    • With his fortieth birthday receding into the distance, along with his hairline and his most successful novel, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction - pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. What will it take for the pain to finally leave him alone?

      The Anatomy Lesson2014
      3,7
    • Соглядатай

      • 154bladzijden
      • 6 uur lezen

      Повесть иронично обыгрывающая давнюю литературную тему двойничества. Главный герой повествования, живущий в Берлине русский эмигрант, оскорбительным образом избит ревнивым мужем своей любовницы и, не в силах пережить унижения, решается на самоубийство

      Соглядатай2013
      3,7
    • Tropic of Cancer

      • 318bladzijden
      • 12 uur lezen

      Now hailed as an American classic Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."

      Tropic of Cancer2012
      3,7
    • Oscar Wilde's brilliant play makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and dazzling humour. It is 1890's England and two young gentlemen are being somewhat limited with the truth. To inject some excitement into their lives, Mr Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, as an excuse to leave his dull country life behind him to pursue the object of his desire, the ravishing Gwendolyn. While across town Algernon Montecrieff decides to take the name Earnest, when visiting Worthing's young ward Cecily. The real fun and confusion begins when the two end up together and their deceptions are in danger of being revealed.

      The Importance of Being Earnest2012
      4,3
    • Tremendous Trifles

      • 150bladzijden
      • 6 uur lezen

      The thirty-nine short essays that make up Chesterton's delightful book are the result of "sitting still and letting marvels and adventures settle on him like flies." Actually, the author does move around quite a bit-to Germany, France, and on foot in England when he tires of waiting for a train. Everywhere he goes, Chesterton looks at ordinary things and asks us to see how extraordinary they are: the contents of his pockets, the items in a railway station, pedestrians in the street. What appear to be trifles are actually tremendous, and he uses them as a springboard to expound on Christianity, the nuclear family, democracy, and the like with supreme clarity and wit. The essays gathered here are a testament to G.K. Chesterton's faith-not his faith in religion or a higher power, but in the ability to discover something wonderful in the objects, the experiences, and the people that cross our paths every single day. With his unique brand of humor and insight, he demonstrates how the commonplace adds enormous value to the landscape of daily life. Full of both good sense and nonsense, Chesterton's commentaries-first published nearly a century ago-remain fresh today.

      Tremendous Trifles2011
      4,5
    • A darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue from one of the leading writers of the twentieth century, the acclaimed author of Lolita. "Half-poem, half-prose...a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. One of the great works of art of this century." —Mary McCarthy, New York Times bestselling author of The Group An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king. Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, Vladimir Nabokov's witty novel achieves that rarest of things in literature—perfect tragicomic balance.

      Pale fire : a novel2011
      4,2
    • De Verleidster van Florence

      • 383bladzijden
      • 14 uur lezen

      De Mogol van de liefde, zo noemt de jonge Europeaan zich, die als verstekeling aan boord van een schip terechtkomt om het als vorst te verlaten. Dit is het begin van een schelmenroman die zich al snel ontpopt tot een koningsdrama. Want de jongeman komt een troon opeisen: hij beweert het kind te zijn van een vergeten prinses, de Zwartogige die ooit een Florentijnse huursoldaat had verleid en daarom de verleidster van Florence werd genoemd. Kan het bestaan, een oosterse koning met westerse wortels? Wat gebeurt er wanneer Florence en Delhi samengaan? Bestond de verleidster wel? En zo niet: kan de jonge Mogol dan wel blijven leven? Het zijn vragen waar Salman Rushdie misschien wel zijn mooiste boek omheen heeft gebouwd. In De verleidster van Florence worden de glorie van de Italiaanse renaissance en de hoogtijdagen van de Indiase traditie in een meesterlijke stijl opgetrokken. Het is een verhaal van bedrog, moord, intrige - en van erotiek, geloof en verfijning. Maar vooral is De verleidster van Florence het bewijs dat de botsing tussen Oost en West ook pure schoonheid kan opleveren.

      De Verleidster van Florence2010
      3,6
    • Kaleidoscope and Other Short Stories

      • 191bladzijden
      • 7 uur lezen

      Une audio-cassette accompagne le livre (60 mn). Appartient à la collection livre de poche et à la collection les langues modernes. Choix et annotations par William B. Barrie

      Kaleidoscope and Other Short Stories2009
      4,6
    • 'Vladimir Nabokov was a literary genius' David Lodge'Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest', Nabokov wrote of King, Queen, Knave. Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe- lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. 'If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in' - Nabokov darts a glance to the reader - 'he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there...

      King, Queen, Knave2009
      4,2
    • Nabokov's first novel is now available in a trade paper edition. Here is the dark tale of a handsome officer who lives next door to his lover's husband in a dreary Berlin boarding house.

      Mary2008
      4,1
    • The controversial, erotic and hilarious companion to the legendary 'Tropic of Cancer', in a new Perennial Modern Classics edition.

      Tropic of Capricorn2006
      3,9
    • Dvaadvacet próz, jež tvoří druhý ze tří svazků souborného vydání Nabokovovy povídkové tvorby, přesvědčivě dokládá rychlý rozvoj autorova prozaického nadání i schopnost vracet se v nových a nápaditých variacích ke klíčovým tématům a motivům. Vstup do druhého desetiletí berlínského pobytu přináší v Nabokovově díle nové obrazy života v emigraci a reminiscence dětství v předrevolučním Rusku, spolu s nimi však i rostoucí pozornost vůči zostřující se atmosféře nacistického Německa. Přes mimořádnou vnímavost k podrobnostem a proměnám okolního světa ale Nabokov zůstává i v prózách ze třicátých let především tvůrcem bytostně zaujatým obecnými tématy lidské existence a formálním a estetickým potenciálem literárního textu. Čtrnáct z textů svazku vychází česky vůbec poprvé, překlady ostatních byly pro nové vydání revidovány nebo nahrazeny dosud nepublikovanými.

      Povídky / 2 1930-19372004
      4,5
    • Thema van de Boekenweek 2001 is 'Het land van herkomst' met als ondertitel 'Schrijven tussen twee culturen'. Het Boekenweekgeschenk is dit jaar van een buitenlandse auteur, de bekende schrijver Salman Rushdie. Het is 'een caleidoscopische roman die een actueel portret schetst van een leven aan het begin van het derde millennium, van een wereldstad in een tijd van schijnbaar eindeloze welvaart, die paradoxaal ook een tijd is van dorheid in het dagelijkse bestaan van veel mensen.'

      Woede2003
      3,4
    • Lolita

      • 329bladzijden
      • 12 uur lezen

      Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.

      Lolita2003
      4,0
    • 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. The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.

      Penguin Modern Classics: Bend Sinister2002
      3,8
    • Pnin

      • 190bladzijden
      • 7 uur lezen

      One of the best-loved of Nabokov’s novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator. Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct. Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.

      Pnin2001
      3,9
    • An automobile accident strands Nero Wolfe and Archie in the middle of a private pasture--and a family feud over a prize bull.The feud is about a restauranteur's plan to buy the stud and barbecue it as a publicity stunt. It may be in poor taste, but it isn't a crime . . . until Hickory Caesar Grindon, the soon-to-be-beefsteak bull, is found pawing the remains of a family scion. Wolfe is sure the idea that Caesar is the murderer is, well, pure bull. Now the great detective is on the horns of a dilemma as a veritable stampede of suspects--including a young lady Archie has his eye on--conceals a special breed of killer who wins a blue ribbon for sheer audacity.A grand master of the form, Rex Stout was one of America's greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained--and puzzled--millions of mystery fans around the world. Along with Archie Goodwin, his perambulatory man-about-town, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth Nero Wolfe stars in seventy-three cases of crime and detection.

      Some buried Ceasar1999
      4,2
    • De laatste zucht van de Moor

      • 447bladzijden
      • 16 uur lezen

      Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby is a 'high-born crossbreed', the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinise spice merchants and crime lords. He is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a labyrinthine tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerised offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. The Moor's Last Sigh is a spectacularly ambitious, funny, satirical and compassionate novel. It is a love song to a vanishing world, but also its last hurrah. ~from the back cover

      De laatste zucht van de Moor1999
      4,0
    • When Priscilla Eads, heiress to the fortune of a cotton towel company, implores Nero Wolfe to sort through a case buried in dirty laundry, Wolfe says no. But hours later, Mrs. Eads and her maid get strangled, and the stories of the suspects don't quite wash.To the dismay of a greedy board of directors and Mrs. Eads' gold-digging ex-husband, the astute Wolfe decides to scrub away the stain of murder.6 hrs. 23 min.

      Prisoner's Base1999
      4,2
    • Freddie Montgomery is a gentleman first and a murderer second. He committed two crimes - he stole a painting from a wealthy family friend and he killed a chambermaid who caught him in the act. Here he tells his story

      The book of evidence1999
      3,8
    • Details of a sunset --Bad day --Orache --Return of Chorb --Passenger --Letter that never reached Russia --Guide to Berlin --Doorbell --Thunderstorm --Reunion --Slice of life --Christmas --Busy man.

      Details of a Sunset: and Other Stories1998
      4,2
    • From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. • "Scintillating … One finds here amazing glimpses into the life of a world that has vanished forever." —The New York Times Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

      Speak, memory. An Autobiography Revisited1998
      4,1
    • East, West

      • 224bladzijden
      • 8 uur lezen

      In these nine stories, Salman Rushdie looks at what happens when East meets West, at the forces that pull his characters first in one direction, then the other. Fantasy and realism collide as a rickshaw driver writes letters describing his film star career in Bombay; a mispronunciation leads to romance and an unusual courtship in sixties London; two childhood friends turned diplomats live out in a violent world fantasies hatched by "Star Trek"; and Christopher Columbus dreams of consummating his relationship with Queen Isabella. The stories in "East, West" show the extraordinary range and power of Salman Rushdie's writing.

      East, West1997
      3,6
    • Smurov, a fussily self-conscious Russian tutor, shoots himself after a humiliating beating by his mistress' husband. Unsure whether his suicide has been successful or not, Smurov drifts around Berlin, observing his acquaintances, but finds he can discover very little about his own life from the opinions of his distracted, confused fellow-emigres.

      The Eye1996
      3,7
    • Middernachtskinderen

      • 531bladzijden
      • 19 uur lezen

      De lotgevallen van een welgestelde Indo-Pakistaanse familie in de periode 1900-1975.

      Middernachtskinderen1995
      4,0
    • Shame

      • 288bladzijden
      • 11 uur lezen

      In his extraordinary third novel, first published in 1983, Salman Rushdie gives readers a colorful, complex fantasy of history, art, language, politics, and religion. Set in a country not quite Pakistan, the story centers around the families of two men engaged in a protracted duel that is played out in the political life of their country.

      Shame1990
      3,8
    • Life & Times of Michael K

      • 256bladzijden
      • 9 uur lezen

      In South Africa, whose civil administration is colapsing under the pressure of years of civil strife, an obscure young gardener named Michael K decides to take his mother on a long march away from the guns towards a new life in the abandoned countryside. Everywhere he goes however, the war follows him. Tracked down and locked up as a collaborator with the rural guerrillas, he embarks on a fast that angers, baffles, and finally awes his captors. The story of Michael K is the story of a man caught up in a war beyond his understanding, but determined to live his life, however minimally, on his own terms. J.M. Coetzee has produced a masterpiece which has the astonishing power to make the wilderness boom.

      Life & Times of Michael K1988
      3,8