Telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5173132/Lolita-novelist-Vladimir-Nabokovs-last-work-to-be-published.html
Lolita novelist Vladimir Nabokov's last work to be published
The unfinished last work by Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the controversial novel Lolita, is to be published
Penguin to publish Lolita novelist Vladimir Nabokov's last work
The Russian-born American novelist had wanted The Original of Laura to be destroyed when he died in 1977.
But after decades of deliberation his son, Dimitri Nabokov, has finally taken the decision to publish. He apparently did so because his father also wanted Lolita, his most well-known book, to be burned
Alexis Kirschbaum, editor at Penguin Classics, bought the book and rights to continue publishing the Nabakov backlist in a six-figure deal, according to The Bookseller magazine.
The Original of Laura will be published as a Penguin Classics hardback on November 3, priced £25.
Kirschbaum said she and Stefan McGrath, the managing director of Penguin Classics, sealed the deal after a three-day stay at Dimitri Nabakov's home in Montreaux, Switzerland. It was brokered by Andrew Wylie, the New York-based literary agent known as 'The Jackal'.
Kirschbaum said: "It was important that we meet because it was a big acquisition, and it was quite emotional for Dimitri because it was a big decision to publish, which took him decades."
The Original of Laura returns to territory that Nabokov explored in his previous novels Mary, Lolita and Ada – the yearning to recapture young love.
It is narrated by a man who fell obsessively in love with a girl when young, but is now unhappily married to a promiscuous wife.
Kirschbaum, who described the book as both dark and comic, said: "In this novel he is also very interested in psychology and in what it means to hate yourself and want to disappear."
She said the book, which Nabokov wrote by hand on a series of 138 index cards, amounted to "a good chunk" of text that took "several hours" to read.
Penguin Classics will publish all the cards in the book, with a transcript of text on the opposite page.
Kirschbaum added: "I'm an avid, obsessed fan of Nabokov and for other fans it's incredibly interesting to see his handwriting and read his prose – not necessarily extremely polished, but you can still see kernels of genius in everything he wrote."
Penguin Classics intends to republish Nabokov's entire backlist, beginning this November with six of his novels that explore themes of childhood and young love.
Publication of a collection of Nabokov poems never before published in English is planned for November 2010, followed by a collection of previously unpublished letters to his wife Vera a year later.
