The Eye

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Penguin Books, 1992 - Fiction - 103 pages

Smurov, a fussily self-conscious Russian tutor, shoots himself after a humiliating beating by his mistress' husband. Unsure whether his suicide has been successful or not, Smurov drifts around Berlin, observing his acquaintances, but finds he can discover very little about his own life from the opinions of his distracted, confused fellow-émigrés. Nabokov's shortest novel, The Eye is both a satirical detective story and a wonderfully layered exploration of identity, appearance and the loss of self in a world of word-play and confusion.

About the author

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nobokov was born April 22, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia to a wealthy family. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge. When he left Russia, he moved to Paris and eventually to the United States in 1940. He taught at Wellesley College and Cornell University. Nobokov is revered as one of the great American novelists of the 20th Century. Before he moved to the United States, he wrote under the pseudonym Vladimir Serin. Among those titles, were Mashenka, his first novel and Invitation to a Beheading. The first book he wrote in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. He is best know for his work Lolita which was made into a movie in 1962. In addition to novels, he also wrote poetry and short stories. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, but never won it. Nabokov died July 2, 1977.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Eye; A Penguin book : Fiction; A Penguin book; Volume 949 of Penguin modern classics; Penguin twentieth-century classics
• Author: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin Books, 1992
• Original from: Northwestern University
• Digitized: Jan 4, 2012
• ISBN: 0140184821, 9780140184822
• Length: 103 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary