Nabokov's rapturous masterpiece of erotic obsession entered the common consciousness and inspired two films. It also inspired Nabokov himself to try his hand at screenwriting, and the result was this typically graceful and ingenious screenplay, which he wrote in 1960. Lolita- A Screenplay gleefully demolishes a host of stereotypes - sexual, moral and aesthetic. The notion that cinema and literature are two separate spheres is dismantled as Nabokov marries the structural and narrative felicities of great film and prose to create a work that will delight cineophiles and Nabokovians alike.
Nabokov's first major work and his only play, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy. In this astonishingly precocious work, we see for the first time the major themes of this great writer- intense sexual desire and jealousy, precarious make-believe, glittering happiness and abject despair.
Author Biography
One of the twentieth century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977) was born in St Petersburg, but left Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power. 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. His first novel in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, published in 1941. His other books include Ada or Ardor (1969), Laughter in the Dark (1933), Pale Fire (1962), the short story collection Details of a Sunset (1976) and Lolita (1955), his best-known novel.
