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Despair
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder.
One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
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Set against a backdrop of jazz music, bootlegging, and lavish parties, The Great Gatsby is the story of Midwesterner Nick Carraway’s curious introduction to the decadent world of his mysterious, wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby, whose thirst for riches is matched only by his tragic obsession with the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. This dangerously propulsive tale of glitz and glamour continues to be relevant as listeners long for escapist novels—a chance to flee into Gatsby’s famed mansion and lose oneself in the rush of opulence.
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Alive and Wild! I finished it same day.
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Ghosts: Edith Wharton's Gothic Tales
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Beneath the brilliance that was behind The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome was a dark side. A dark side which produced magnificent tales of the unseen influences in our lives, such as "Mr. Jones", "The Eyes", "Kerfol", "The Ladie's Maid's Bell", and "The Looking Glass".
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Ghastly Shadows of the Feminine Condition
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Cover Her Face
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Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James' electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.
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OK but...
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The fiction world of today needs a “Saint” more than it ever did. For years now that scene has been dominated by the “anti-heroes"—those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hyper-gadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas.
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droning
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Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions
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Auntie Poldi can think of no finer place to wait for death than Sicily. All she asks is a sea view, fine wine (and plenty of it), and her family close around. When death instead takes her handsome young friend Valentino - and under mysterious circumstances at that - Poldi will not take it lying down. Perhaps it's in her blood, but Auntie Poldi's hunting instincts have never felt more alive. Justice must be served - if it's the last thing she does....
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More fun and murder in Sicily!
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying
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Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life.
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Gordon's Grey World is Colored with Grant
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Bulldog Drummond
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Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; excitement essential. When Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC placed that advertisement, he was looking for adventure. What he finds is an international plot headed by the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.
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Fantastic Narration
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Something New
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Here, we have a glorious ensemble of Woodhousian characters knocking elbows to foreheads in the elegant and grand Blandings Castle. Meet Freddy Threepwood, the vagrant son of doddering old Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle. Freddy has recently become engaged to Aline Peters, the American heiress of an irascible father. The snag is that Freddy seems to have at one point become enamored of a struggling actress, Joan Valentine, and written some impetuous and imprudent letters to her.
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Same book as Something Fresh
- By customer on 03-07-15
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Beware of Pity
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In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
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One of my favorite authors
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Herzog
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
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By: Saul Bellow
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A non-Euclidean German love triangle.
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Transparent Things
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" Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero - sullen, gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland.... As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride.... Eight years later - following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment - Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past...." (Martin Amis)
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Moments of absolute and immortal genius
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Nabokov’s fourth novel, The Eye, is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Smurov, a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigré living in pre-war Berlin, commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife as he searches for proof of his existence among fellow émigrés who are too distracted to pay him any heed.
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Ego vero, ergo sum
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A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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An amazing feat for such a unique novel
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes “ I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.”
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A dry run at big, complex themes
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Mary
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In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of serio-comic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin’s, who, he discovers, is Mary’s husband....
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There IS something about Mary!
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By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Speak Memory
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Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.
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Speak, Mnemosyne!
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Glory
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- Unabridged
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Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a 22-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he decides to embark upon a “perilous, daredevil project” — an illegal attempt to reenter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919. He succeeds — but at a terrible cost.
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White émigré version of This Side of Paradise
- By Darwin8u on 07-17-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Look at the Harlequins!
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- Unabridged
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As intricate as a house of mirrors, Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899), whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, though the two are not to be confused (?).
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Peek, Memory!
- By Darwin8u on 09-11-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
What listeners say about Despair
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Reader
- 10-08-21
Performance by …
I love that this is not “read by” or “narrated by” Christopher Lane; it’s performed by him. And what a performance, too. He really brings the subtleties of Nabokov’s humor to life. Highly recommended.
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- TCarbide
- 12-23-12
Beautiful Prose
Any additional comments?
Nabokov is a master prose-writer. I really enjoyed the beauty and cleverness of his writing. After Lolita, this was the second book I listened to by Nabokov. I can't wait to listen to more of his works.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-09-22
Brilliant read
if you, like me, are a fan of Nabokov, this is a must read. And if you aren't a fan of Nabokov- what is wrong with you?
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- Darwin8u
- 10-02-12
Russian emigre candy dandy murderers R my weakness
While this isn't my favorite Nabokov novel and I have to leave room and stars for its better, it is stil bold and amazing. Nabokov is one of those writers I will never tire of. He is imaginative, funny, tight and always just a little naughty. Despair is a false double novel that at once mocks, parodies and honors Crime & Punishment. It was like Nabokov set out to write a fanciful doppelgänger novel of Crime and Punishment, but felt like he would prefer to dress Raskolnikov up a bit; bend the mirror and make him fancy, turn him into a Russian emigre candy dandy.
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- mike
- 12-05-20
thoroughly entertaining!!
so clever most likable antihero ever i wish they were all like this -i joined audible just for this one and i’m so glad i did!
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- Chrissie
- 11-07-15
Merely a Forefunner to Lolita
Seriously, I didn't like this. Yeah, I like how Vladimir Nabokov writes but this book just doesn't have the sparkle, the humor or the polished writing of Lolita or Speak, Memory or other books by the author. It feels like a piece that still needs more work….or maybe you can work something to death. Look at the history of this book. Despair first came out in 1934 as a serial in the Russian literary journal Sovremennye. It was published as a book in 1936, translated by the author into English in 1937, but what exists today is the author's reworking of 1965. Clearly he did have time to rethink this.
Why doesn’t it work for me? Despair not only was a forerunner to Lolita, published in 1955, but it feels like that too. One can compare Hermann of this novel with Lolita's Humbert Humbert. Both are unreliable first-person narrators, but one is a shadow of the other. Not in who they are but in the strength of their characterizations. Lydia, Hermann's wife, doesn't come close to Lolita's Dolores.
So what is the theme of this one? It is a murder story, but more! It is really about doubles, about identity and what connects one person to another. Hermann is delusional. Anything he says has to be questioned. Of course that is true too of Humbert Humbert, but there it is easier to just see the facts presented as his point of view. In Despair the story is so much more complicated; you are thrown between the writing of a story, how authors write stories and what actually happens, i.e. the events of the tale. Too complicated! Not properly thought through. Similar themes but quite simply not as good.
There are also funnier and more noteworthy lines in Lolita. More to chuckle at. More to think about on all sorts of themes, having nothing to do with sex or murder.
Christopher Lane does a good job with the narration, even if occasionally when he personifies dubious characters of Russian origin it was practically impossible to hear the lines. Arrogance, self-satisfaction and delusional traits, as well as furious explosions of temper all are well intoned.
For me this was quite simple a forerunner to Lolita. That I gave five stars.
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- Jeremy
- 11-22-12
Let's just say it's for the intellectual type!
This may sound bad, but the book makes me think about these modern paintings, black on black, little cubes on white font; in fact, the vaguely modern Rothko image in the front is a good indicator of who should like the book.
Honestly, the book is entirely incomprehensible, something that the narrator does masterly convey (and contributes to). Everything that happens is completely absurd, to the point that it is difficult to say that something is actually supposed to be funny. It's hard to understand the character, what happens to him as if everything happened in a haze. The intrigue takes a long time to kick in and, when it does, the mind is so anesthetized that it took me a while to realize that some intrigue was beginning. I know this is a literary style, maybe it's closer to poetry than it is to a novel?
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