King, Queen, Jack

In his second novel, written in Berlin, "King, Queen, Jack" (1928), Vladimir Nabokov turns to material from German life and embarks on a deep exploration of bourgeois psychology, continued later in "The Eye" and "Despair". Behind the criminal plot with... a love triangle lies a masterfully revealed confrontation between two polar lifestyles: the mechanical, soulless, automated one, and the natural, full-blooded, creative one. In the conditional world of advertisements and fashion magazines, the very consciousness and nature of the young "lady", the main character of the book, seem to materialize, and conversely, the daily life and projects of her husband, the wealthy businessman Dreyer, the "king" in that complicated game Nabokov plays with the reader, are filled with unexpected poetry. This edition is supplemented with an episode from the expanded English version of the novel, first translated into Russian.