
The Eye
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Narrated by:
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Fred Stella
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By:
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Vladimir Nabokov
About this listen
Nabokov’s fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Smurov, a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigré living in pre-war Berlin, commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife as he searches for proof of his existence among fellow émigrés who are too distracted to pay him any heed.
©1930 Vladimir Nabokov (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of serio-comic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin’s, who, he discovers, is Mary’s husband....
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Overall
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Story
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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 emigre 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.
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Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
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Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
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" Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero - sullen, gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland.... As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride.... Eight years later - following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment - Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past...." (Martin Amis)
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These masterly poems span the whole of Nabokov's career from "Music", written in 1914, to the short, playful "To Vera", composed in 1974. The works are newly translated by Dmitiri Nabokov, and include "The University Poem", an extraordinary autobiographical poem in which Nabokov recalls his life in Cambridge, with its crooked alleys and age-old gates, teas at the vicar's and British girls. Included to are such poems as "To Russia" ("Will you leave me alone! I implore you!), the enchanting "Eve", and verse about America, sport, love, and poetry itself.
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Overall
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Performance
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Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.
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Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.
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Russian emigre candy dandy murderers R my weakness
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Overall
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One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning.
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Brilliant work, excellently narrated
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Barcelona, 1945: Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his 11th birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again.
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Have the book handy
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- Unabridged
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Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.
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Russian emigre candy dandy murderers R my weakness
- By Darwin8u on 10-02-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Invitation to a Beheading
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition.
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Nabokov's Strange Violin Playing in the Void
- By Darwin8u on 10-28-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes “ I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.”
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A dry run at big, complex themes
- By Darwin8u on 12-08-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
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An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
What listeners say about The Eye
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- Krishna Murphy
- 11-29-23
Trippy, Stellar Novella
Reminiscent of FD’s Notes From the Underground, this novella tackles identity and society and human nature in the most eloquent language ever penned.
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- Mark
- 08-15-23
Mysterious
Great, short novel by Nabokov. Somewhat Kafkaesque?. I had to listen to the first part twice, but worth it! I'm so glad Nabokov is available on Audio.
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- Darwin8u
- 12-18-13
Ego vero, ergo sum
“a sinner’s torment in the afterworld consists precisely in that his tenacious mind cannot find peace until it manages to unravel the complex consequences of his reckless terrestrial actions.”
A short, tight little Nabokov novella about a Russian émigré's suicide. The protagonist/protagonist's ghost attempts, after a(n) (un)successful suicide to determine the characteristics of Smurov.
The novella explores the concept of identity as being manufactured out of the many differing mirrors of how we are viewed by others. Our social construction or understanding|significance|meaning are not found in the Descartian "cogito ergo sum" but instead discovered by the "I am viewed|seen, therefore, many 'eyes' exist of me." Or said differently, "We are each known|viewed|understood by others. The real US is the sum and the momentum of these phantoms."
How well do we really know ourselves? If I could 'comprehend' myself by seeing me as others see me, would that change the nature of who I am? I mean, as they REALLY see me. Does the knowledge of this observation change the nature of who I am? It is a total EGO exercise, but there have been many times when I REALLY wanted to know exactly how I was seen or perceived by others. Not how I thought they saw me, but an almost dislocated desire to see|experience myself through their 'eyes.' That is the essence of this novel. "Ego vero, ergo sum".
I liked it, but just didn't LOVE it. It contains many of the germs|embryonic themes Nabokov would chase (and actually catch) in his later novels.
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12 people found this helpful
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- winterspell
- 06-17-16
Quit rating Nabokov on a Nabokov scale!
Since the narrator was great, I see no reason why this tale should get any less than 5 stars in all departments. That is, if one is rating the novel on its own merit and/or against other works of fiction - NOT WRITTEN by Nabokov.
IMO, Nabokov's most prolific audiobook reviewers appear to have some compulsive need to compare / pit all his works against each other & rate henceforth (rather than on individual merit).
There's also a huge mix of the existential vs. the straightforward in his works.
My advice -- assume they are all 4.2-5.0s & pick your Nabokov based on the item's SUMMARY (not 1 or 2 reviewers' descriptions or "analyses"). His novels, novellas & short stories vary wildly, but the 80% I've listened to so far were all excellent to glorious!
Also, I'm NEUROTIC about narrators & have had no issues thus far (tho I'm currently reading Pale Fire old school...the clip scared me). Arthur Morey (from other Nabokov audios) reads kinda slow & a bit soft/dry, but after a short while, I found his even keel soothing.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 02-05-23
Not an engaging story
Hard to follow to conclusions
The point of the story was flat
Some characters were not well developed
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- Keith
- 09-11-15
Not Deap Thought, Deap crap
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
My daughter likes Nabokov and recommended this book but I found it boring and pointless. The beginning was OK, interesting twist, and some humor but the middle was dreadful and the end???? Lets say I've learned how to cut my losses. I am quite analytical. There are those who can find deep meaning in what is pointless abstract crap to me. God bless them but spare me.
Would you ever listen to anything by Vladimir Nabokov again?
No
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