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Vladimir Nabokov: The Man from the USSR and Other Plays (1923 - 1938)

By Sigrun Frank (Wolfson College, Oxford)

Indexing Data:

  • Domain: Literature.
  • Genre: Play Collection.
  • Country: Russia, Continental Europe; USA, North America.

Life, Works and Times

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Vladimir Nabokov is far better known for his novels than for his plays. This might partly be explained by the fact that, in comparison to his novels, Nabokov’s dramatic output was rather meagre: three completed verse plays and three prose dramas, all of which were written during his Russian language period as an émigré in Germany and France. After his departure to America in 1940, the writer himself seems to have lost interest in his dramas. He only translated one of the plays, The Waltz Invention, into English. Most of his dramas are only available to the English reader through the translations of Dmitri Nabokov, who after his father’s death collected four plays - The Man from the USSR (Chelovek

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Published 04 September 2003

Citation: Frank, Sigrun. "The Man from the USSR and Other Plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. 4 September 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=246, accessed 9 February 2010.]