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    Laughter in the Dark

    Part of Vintage International

    Author Vladimir Nabokov
    Look inside
    Paperback
    $16.95 US
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Dec 17, 1989 | 304 Pages | 9780679724506
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    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 herself. 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.

    “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written that is, a ecstatically.” —John Updike
    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. View titles by Vladimir Nabokov
    "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written that is, a ecstatically."
    —John Updike

    “A remarkable achievement, if not a masterpiece.”
    —The New York Times

    “Both hilarious and deliciously cruel.”
    —The Guardian

    “A masterful short novel . . . an important precursor to Lolita.”
    —The New Yorker

    About

    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 herself. 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.

    “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written that is, a ecstatically.” —John Updike

    Author

    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. View titles by Vladimir Nabokov

    Praise

    "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written that is, a ecstatically."
    —John Updike

    “A remarkable achievement, if not a masterpiece.”
    —The New York Times

    “Both hilarious and deliciously cruel.”
    —The Guardian

    “A masterful short novel . . . an important precursor to Lolita.”
    —The New Yorker

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