"Transparent Things revolves around 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 New York with his bride. . . . Eight years later -- following a murder, a period of madness and brief imprisonment -- Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past. . . . The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] ...
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"Transparent Things revolves around 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 New York with his bride. . . . Eight years later -- following a murder, a period of madness and brief imprisonment -- Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past. . . . The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects." - Martin Amis One of the twentieth 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. "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike
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Add this copy of Transparent Things to cart. $11.00, new condition, Sold by Book Outpost rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Brilliance Audio.
This, one of Nabokov's lesser known works, is also perhaps one of his most bizarre. The story revolves around the main character, Hugh Person, and his four vacations in Sweden. Each is marred by tragedy and supplemented with comedy. Despite the everyman quality of the protagonist, the story is less than relatable. It is not told in a straight-forward chronological fashion but rather in a surreal revolving way; Nabokov jumps back and forth between the four trips. It makes for a difficult read if you plan to take it in in short bursts. It's best if you read this short novel in one take, and the four trips will seem to blend into one, and somehow, it will all make perfect sense.
