The title of this Vladimir Nabokov story is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Othello. Several characters reflect those in the famous play, and it shares the same major theme (jealousy). The story is more than the tale of a deceitful, adulterous wife who may have only married the older narrator to escape the German occupation. The narrator’s heartbreak has caused him to question not only his wife’s existence, but also whether life is worth living. His letter is an attempt to unburden himself, and create some hope for the future. Other themes: escape, betrayal, deception, uncertainty, suicide (implied by the title). More…

Readers often need to re-visit this Vladimir Nabokov story several times to grasp the nuances of the plot. This may explain why, despite its critical acclaim, the story was famously rejected by New Yorker magazine. The major characters are a misogynistic first-person narrator and two sisters, one of whom strongly believes in the occult. Like other Nabokov stories, secret codes (this time in the form of an acrostic) are involved. The message hidden in the final paragraph leaves readers wondering how much of the story came to the narrator from the spirits of the now dead sisters. More…

Vladimir Nabokov indicated to a friend that Signs and Symbols contains a story within the story, with a second (main) story hidden behind various textual clues. The frame story, which involves an elderly couple’s dilemma as to how to deal with their institutionalized mentally-ill son, is a moving piece of dramatic prose in its own right. The inner story has been the subject of so much speculation that dissertations have been devoted to it. Some argue that encouraging such over-analysis was intentional on Nabokov’s part, and that in reality there is no hidden story. What do you think? More…

This early story by Vladimir Nabokov is not about places to see in Berlin, but rather the narrator’s observations of some everyday aspects of city life. Through a series of vignettes he describes pipes left on the footpath, the streetcar system, people he sees working on the streets, the city zoo and the pub in which he is drinking with a friend. The major theme is the relationship between time and memory: how some things we experience today will become “future recollections”, and the artist’s duty to record his/her experiences in detail for the benefit of future generations. More…