Vladimir Nabokov, The Man from the USSR and Other Plays

Sigrun Frank (University of Oxford)
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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 iz SSSR

),

The Event

(

Sobytie

),

The Pole

(

Polius

) and

The Grand-dad

(

Dedushka

) - in the…

2130 words

Citation: Frank, Sigrun. "The Man from the USSR and Other Plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 September 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=246, accessed 19 March 2024.]

246 The Man from the USSR and Other Plays 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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