Showing results for "vladimir" in Historical Fiction

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.

As intricate as a house of mirrors, Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899), whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, though the two are not to be confused (?).

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....

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.

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.”

Pnin está considerada como "la más deliciosa de las novelas de Nabokov" (G. M. Hyde), "la más inmediatamente atractiva" (Laurie Clancy) y, posiblemente, la más divertida de toda su obra, tan rebosante de humor. Su protagonista es el profesor Pnin, un ruso de la emigración que se gana la vida dando clases a media docena escasa de alumnos desganados que acuden a su aula como quien va a ver una película de Buster Keaton.

Seventeenth century Russia, New Jerusalem Monastery. The recently deposed Patriarch Nikon, whose reforms lead to a schism in the Orthodox church, employs a French dramatist to stage the New Testament and hasten the Second Coming of Christ. Jacques de Sertan’s troupe consists of untrained and illiterate peasants. The actors are divided into roles, whole families play different social or ethnic groups that lived in Jerusalem around the time of Christ. No one, however, is allowed to play the Messiah.

Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a 22-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he decides to embark upon a “perilous, daredevil project” — an illegal attempt to reenter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919. He succeeds — but at a terrible cost.

"Варшава" – роман о ранних годах дикого (бело)русского капитализма, о первых "сникерсах" и поддельных, но таких дорогих сердцу джинсах Levi's, о близкой и заманчивой Европе и о тяжелой, но честной жизни последнего поколения родившихся в СССР. С другой стороны, это роман о светлой студенческой молодости и о первой любви, которая прячется, но светит, о неплохих, в общем-то, людях, которые живут рядом с нами. И о том, что надежда всегда остается, и даже в самом банальном и привычном может мелькнуть настоящее.

Nikola Tesla was a man forever misunderstood. From his boyhood in what is present-day Croatia, where his father, a Serbian Orthodox priest, dismissed his talents, to his tumultuous years in New York City, where his heated rivalry with Thomas Edison yielded triumphs and failures, Tesla was both demonized and lionized. Tesla captures the whirlwind years of the dawn of the electrical age, when his flair for showmanship kept him in the public eye.

Roman Val'tera Skotta "Puritane" (1815) yarko i uvlekatel'no povestvuet o znamenitom shotlandskom vosstanii 1679 g. za nacional'nuyu nezavisimost' i religioznuyu svobodu. Na fone burnyh istoricheskih sobytiy izobrazhena dramaticheskaya istoriya molodyh lyudey, polyubivshih drug druga, no okazavshihsya v raznyh lageryah. Na ih puti - beschislennye opasnosti, nepreodolimye prepyatstviya, nelepye sluchaynosti, no glubokoe chuvstvo, vernost' svoim vzglyadam i obshchestvennomu dolgu.

Many have read about the life of Socrates. Many are familiar with Plato's poignant description of his death. But who had ever thought of what took place afterwards? Ukrainian writer and scholar Vladimir Korolenko took it upon himself to consider this question.

A fairly fictionalized but nevertheless powerful and poignant take on Beethoven's last days by Vladimir Odoyevsky.

Příběh Olgy Hepnarové, která jedním otočením volantu zabila osm lidí, poslední ženy odsouzené v Československu k trestu smrti. Bylo úterý 10. července roku 1973, krátce před druhou hodinou odpolední. Obyčejný všední den na pražské Letné. Pro jednu dvaadvacetiletou dívku však nebylo cesty zpátky. Nákladní auto, které řídila, prudce vybočilo z předpokládané dráhy, vřítilo se na chodník plný lidí, pak srovnalo kola a jízdou po chodníku těsně kolem stěny domů poráželo, přejíždělo a drtilo každého, kdo mu nestačil uhnout z cesty.

An old and insightful tale, Indian Tale About Four Deaf Men holds up surprisingly well in the modern context.