The Gift
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Despair
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
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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4 out of 5 stars
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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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The Luzhin Defense
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 53
Nabokov’s third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen — an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster — but at a cost: in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Life and chess are such lonely battles
- By Darwin8u on 11-13-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Laughter in the Dark
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Darwin8u on 05-19-13
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
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4 out of 5 stars 115
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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4 out of 5 stars
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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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Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 24
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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4 out of 5 stars
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Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Speak Memory
- An Autobiography Revisited
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 382
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 333
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Story4 out of 5 stars 333
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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4 out of 5 stars
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this inspired me to read Nabokov's novels
- By meredith mcarthur on 03-16-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Despair
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 70
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Russian emigre candy dandy murderers R my weakness
- By Darwin8u on 10-02-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
The Luzhin Defense
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 66
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 53
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 53
Nabokov’s third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen — an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster — but at a cost: in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Life and chess are such lonely battles
- By Darwin8u on 11-13-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Laughter in the Dark
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Darwin8u on 05-19-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Invitation to a Beheading
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 116
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 115
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Nabokov's Strange Violin Playing in the Void
- By Darwin8u on 10-28-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 24
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Speak Memory
- An Autobiography Revisited
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 382
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 333
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 333
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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4 out of 5 stars
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this inspired me to read Nabokov's novels
- By meredith mcarthur on 03-16-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Ada, or Ardor
- A Family Chronicle
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4 out of 5 stars 108
Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but 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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Worst reading performance of all time.
- By Brian on 11-25-14
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Pale Fire
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 406
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 346
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Story4 out of 5 stars 347
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An amazing feat for such a unique novel
- By AmazonCustomer on 03-27-12
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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,030
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,611
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7,563
Why we think it’s a great listen: Among the great literary achievements of the 20th century, Lolita soars in audio thanks to the incomparable Jeremy Irons, bringing to life Nabokov’s ability to shock and enthrall more than 50 years after publication. Lolita became a cause celebre because of the erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Nabokov's masterpiece owes its stature not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story that is shocking in its beauty and tenderness.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Surprising good reading
- By Yvette D Skinner on 05-28-09
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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Overall4 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
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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3 out of 5 stars
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A dry run at big, complex themes
- By Darwin8u on 12-08-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 181
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 162
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 160
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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5 out of 5 stars
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worth the wait
- By L. Kerr on 06-01-20
By: Thomas Mann
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Bend Sinister
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
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.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A fantastic fairytale of fascism
- By Darwin8u on 12-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Mary
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 4 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4 out of 5 stars 26
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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3 out of 5 stars
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There IS something about Mary!
- By Darwin8u on 12-22-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Enchanter
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
The Enchanter is the Ur-Lolita, the precursor to Nabokov’s classic novel. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls, whose coltish grace and subconscious coquetry reveal, to his mind, a special bud on the verge of bloom.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Nabokov's black salad devouring a green rabbit
- By Darwin8u on 10-14-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 31 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
From Vladimir Nabokov, the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and the 1950s, these 68 tales — 14 of which have been translated into English for the first time - display all the shades of Nabokov’s imagination.
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3 out of 5 stars
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No discernable beginning or end to the stories.
- By Madelaine on 01-22-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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And Quiet Flows the Don
- By: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Mikhail Sholokhov’s groundbreaking epic novel gives a sweeping depiction of Russian life and culture in the early 20th century. In the same vein as War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, And Quiet Flows the Don gives listeners a glimpse into many aspects of Russian culture, and the choices a country makes when faced with war and destruction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Had it in pre-order for many months, and then...
- By L. Nery on 08-31-19
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Selected Poems
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 8
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Story4 out of 5 stars 8
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Better than most poetry collections
- By Michael on 08-30-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Transparent Things
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 3 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
" 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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4 out of 5 stars
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Moments of absolute and immortal genius
- By Darwin8u on 10-15-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher's Summary
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native language and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write - a book very much like The Gift itself.
One of the twentieth 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. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
Critic Reviews
Featured Article: Essential Russian Authors to Know in Audio
Don’t be daunted by the towering reputations of Russia’s literary giants. Listening is the perfect way to appreciate the masters. Russia is a sprawling country with a rich and complex history, which is reflected in its literature. Whether you’re keen on brushing up on classic Russian literature or you want to find a new author to explore, we’ve rounded up 13 of the best Russian authors, classic and contemporary, whose work you should know.
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What listeners say about The Gift
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Darwin8u
- 11-30-13
A complex and rich Künstlerroman
A very Proust-inspired (memory, love, dreams, art) Nabokov. The last of his Russian novels, 'the Gift' is a complex and rich Künstlerroman and is one of those novels that makes me wish I spent more time in college studying Russian simply so I could catch the nuanced differences between the Chapters where Nabokov is mimicking Pushkin, Gogol, and other Russian novelists.
Nabokov always amazes me with his ability to provoke, entertain and awe his readers. There are some novelists where it is clear they are writing for a certain audience. Nabokov seems content just to write novels that entertain an audience of one (VN). If someone else gets his books, well, it is all just a sugary and mischievous bonus, but overall ... he'd prefer to be left alone to categorize and pin his rare butterflies and metric variations.
16 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lara
- 08-15-14
Simply Beautiful
Where does The Gift rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
The narrator is boring and monotonous, but the story is mindbogglingly clever and the imagery is top notch.
3 people found this helpful