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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780141185996

  • Length: 192  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 11mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 145g

  • RRP: £9.99

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Spurred on by admiration for his novelist half-brother and irritation at the biography written about him by Mr Goodman ('his slapdash and very misleading book'), the narrator, V, sets out to record Sebastian Knight's life as he understands it. But buried amid the extensive quoting, digressions, seeming explanations and digs, Sebastian's erratic and troubled persona remains as elusive as ever.

Nabokov's first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a nuanced, enigmatic potrayal of the conflict between the real and the unreal, and the futile quest for human truth.

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780141185996

  • Length: 192  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 11mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 145g

  • RRP: £9.99

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About the Author

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Vladimir Nabokov

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Recommendations

96 must-read classics, as chosen by our readers

We asked you for your must-read classics; in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, here is one book for her every year, from iconic bestsellers to lesser-known gems.
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Extracts

Vladimir Nabokov: novelist, poet… esteemed butterfly scientist?

In this essay from his forthcoming collection, There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, titled ‘Lolita and the Blue Icarus’, Carlo Rovelli writes about Nabokov’s foray into lepidoptery – and his surprising recognition as “a scientist of real worth”.

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