Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories [Import] [Paperback]

Vladimir Nabokov (Author), D. Nabokov (Translator)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New Ed edition (March 26, 1981)
• ISBN-10: 0140047344
• ISBN-13: 978-0140047349
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

More About the Author

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri. Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing ficticvbn ral books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

Customer Reviews

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thirteen Stories, September 17, 2007

By 

J. E. Robinson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (Hardcover)

Vladimir Nabokov (1899 to 1977) is a Russian born writer who lived in western Europe and the US, then retired in Switzerland. He has a medium sized body of work with numerous novels and short works. Most know him for his 1955 creation of Lolita, which he wrote and re-wrote for over twenty years before the final product. It was based on a real life French story, but set in America.

Tyrants Destroyed and Other stories was published in 1975, and is based on a series of twelve Russian stories written in the 1920s and 30s, translated by Dmitri Nabokov, plus one new English story written in the US in 1951.

The first story, Tyrants destroyed, dates to 1938 and is a narrative by a schoolteacher, who has become an insomniac and is obsessed with his hatred of his country's dictator who he knew personally as a youth. This hatred has become a neurosis which "obliterates everything else from his life." The problem is that it is quite a general attack and it could be any dictator, so the reader is left in doubt to who is the subject of the narrative.

Of the whole collection, I liked about three or four of the stories. The others were less interesting for myself. I liked A Nursery Tale which is about a man who meets the devil. Also, the story of Music is excellent. It is about who meets a former lover at a concert or recital. I was less excited about A Matter of Chance and Perfection.

In any case, this is an interesting collection by Nabokov. Most of the stories are entertaining, and a few are excellent.

List of stories:

Tyrants Destroyed
A Nursery Tale
Music
Lik
Recruiting
Terror
The Admiralty Spire
A Matter of Chance
In Memory of L.I. Shignev
Bachman
Perfection
Vasiliy Shishkov
The Vane Sisters (the American story)