The King, the Queen, the Jack

In his second novel, written in Berlin, "The King, the Queen, the Jack" 1928, Vladimir Nabokov addresses material from German life and for the first time embarks on a deep exploration of petty bourgeois psychology, which continues later in "The... Camera Obscura" and "Despair." Behind the criminal plot featuring a love triangle lies a masterfully revealed confrontation between two polar lifestyles: the stenciled, soulless, automated one, and the natural, vibrant, 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 everyday life and projects of her husband, the wealthy businessman Dreyer, the "king" in that complex game Nabokov plays with the reader, are unexpectedly filled with poetry. This edition is supplemented by an episode from the expanded English version of the novel, translated into Russian for the first time.