Excerpts: The Times Literary Supplement has unearthed a rare story by Vladimir Nabokov, the author of "Lolita," "Pale Fire" and other poetic classics. Titled "Breitensträter – Paolino," the story has never been published in English before.[   ]This newly uncovered story, "Breitensträter – Paolino," was translated from Russian to English by Anastasia Tolstoy ...and Thomas Karshan.
The topic is a heavyweight boxing match that took place in Berlin in 1925....
The Times Literary Supplement writes:
Of all the sports Nabokov could have chosen to focus on, he took in boxing the one that concentrates as no other the pain and violence he always saw in play. But “Breitensträter–Paolino” is a very literary and verbal account of boxing [...] this is not the only posthumous Nabokov translation or publication. In 2009, the author's incomplete work, "The Original of Laura," was published in spite of his request that the manuscript be burned[   ] Here is a taste of "Breitensträter–Paolino"..."Man has played as long as he has existed. There are ages – holidays of humanity – when man is especially impassioned by games. So it was in bygone Greece, in bygone Rome, and so it is in our own Europe of today..."
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