Nabokov's first novel written in America was inspired by his vision of the madness of totalitarianism, which he called "idiotic and despicable." Adam Krug, an ...Show synopsisNabokov's first novel written in America was inspired by his vision of the madness of totalitarianism, which he called "idiotic and despicable." Adam Krug, an internationally celebrated professor of philosophy, is asked by an old schoolmate, now a power-mad dictator, to lend his support to his brutal regime. Krug refuses. His friends are imprisoned, and his son is sent to the Institute for Abnormal Children where he is experimented upon. Krug finally cracks, goes crazy, is shot attempting to attack the dictator--and is transformed into a moth. Nabokov said of the novel in 1946: "I propose to portray in this book certain subtle achievements of the mind in modern times against a dull-red background of nightmare oppression and persecution. The scholar, the poet, the scientist and the child--these are the victims and witnesses of a world that goes wrong...."Hide synopsis
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This is very intense spooky book punctuated by Nabokov's very odd language. I think it was one of his earliest books in English. I always have to look up a lot of words when I read Nabokov.
Despite being relatively fatigued with books that portray totalitarian governments, Bend Sinister's presentation was strange enough to keep me reading.
My edition has a really off-putting foreword, where Nabokov says that he has written the best authoritarian novel ever and that Orwell can cram it, starts explicitly listing the motifs he has worked into his book--it's his first in English, I can understand pride in this, but it should not have been the first damn thing I read. The protagonist is basically just Pnin in a hilariously inept police state, which means this is a book where you can see every blow coming, where the ending is just Nabokov typing about how he has to look out the window and imagine that Krug will do okay. There's some exceptionally framed scenes here if you're willing to flip through it, though; postmodernism being used to hammer terror through cliches.
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