Table of Contents

Acknowledgements viii Preface: Tricks of Loss 1 1. Deaths of the Author 9 2. Lost Souls: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight 29 3. The Cruelty of Chance: Bend Sinister, 'Signs and Symbols', 'The Vane Sisters' 55 4. The World Without Us: Speak, Memory 83 5. The Language of Lolita 103 6. The Poem of the Past: Eugene Onegin 143 7. Pnin's Revenge 157 8. The Demons of our Pity: Pale Fire 173 9. Happy Families: Ada 206 Epilogue: the History of Pain 232 Chronology: Works by Vladimir Nabokov in English 236 Notes 238 Index 249

Promotional Information

Michael Wood's study of Nabokov is a stunningly brilliant analysis of how, as he says, the sly idiot, the haughty mandarin, and the great, doubting magician get along together in works like Lolita and Ada... In his own beautifully supple and attractive prose, [Wood] renders his insights with grace and wisdom. The Magician's Doubts is, quite simply, a wonderful book, not to be passed up. -- Edward Said

About the Author

Michael Wood is Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English at Princeton University. His previous works include Stendhal and America in the Movies.

Reviews

"This is a fine example of an endangered species: the full-length book of literary criticism dedicated to the appreciation and interpretation of a single author, addressed to the general reader... Reading The Magician's Doubts, we re-experience and recover ... pleasures of Nabokov's texts we may have forgotten or overlooked."--David Lodge, The New York Times Book Review "Wood's book is so thronged with pleasures, so acute in its insights, so replete with clear thoughts limpidly expressed, that one could... write a review of it consisting entirely of quotations from the text... [It] offers us an entirely new set of insights into the work of a modern master."--John Banville, The New York Review of Books