Nabokov's Quartet

by Vladimir Nabokov

book

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Russian Literature, Russia, Audiobook, 20th Century, Literary Fiction

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Vladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up trilingual, speaking Russian, English, and French in a household that nurtured his intellectual curiosities, including a lifelong passion for butterflies. This seemingly idyllic, privileged existence was abruptly shattered by the Bolshevik Revolution, which forced the family into permanent exile in 1919. This early, profound experience of displacement and the loss of a homeland became a central, enduring theme in his subsequent work, fueling his exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irretrievable past.
The first phase of his literary life began in Europe, primarily in Berlin, where he established himself as a leading voice among the Russian émigré community under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin". During this prolific period, he penned nine novels in his native tongue, showcasing a precocious talent for intricate plotting and character study. Works like The Defense explored obsession through the extended metaphor of chess, while Invitation to a Beheading served as a potent, surreal critique of totalitarian absurdity. In 1925, he married Véra Slonim, an intellectual force in her own right, who would become his indispensable partner, editor, translator, and lifelong anchor.
The escalating shadow of Nazism necessitated another, urgent relocation in 1940, this time to the United States. It was here that Nabokov undertook an extraordinary linguistic metamorphosis, making the challenging yet resolute shift from Russian to English as his primary language of expression. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, solidifying his new life in North America. To support his family, he took on academic positions, first founding the Russian department at Wellesley College, and later serving as a highly regarded professor of Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959.
During this academic tenure, he also dedicated significant time to his other great passion: lepidoptery. He worked as an unpaid curator of butterflies at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His scientific work was far from amateurish; he developed novel taxonomic methods and a groundbreaking, highly debated theory on the migration patterns and phylogeny of the Polyommatus blue butterflies, a hypothesis that modern DNA analysis confirmed decades later.
Nabokov achieved widespread international fame and financial independence with the publication of Lolita in 1955, a novel that was initially met with controversy and censorship battles due to its provocative subject matter concerning a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession with a twelve-year-old girl. The novel's critical and commercial success finally allowed him to leave teaching and academia behind. In 1959, he and Véra moved permanently to the quiet luxury of the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he focused solely on writing, translating his earlier Russian works into meticulous English, and studying local butterflies.
His later English novels, such as Pale Fire (1962), a complex, postmodern narrative structured around a 999-line poem and its delusional commentator, cemented his reputation as a master stylist and a technical genius. His literary style is characterized by intricate wordplay, a profound use of allusion, structural complexity, and an insistence on the artist's total, almost tyrannical, control over their created world. Nabokov often expressed disdain for what he termed "topical trash" and the simplistic interpretations of Freudian psychoanalysis, preferring instead to focus on the power of individual consciousness, the mechanics of memory, and the intricate, often deceptive, interplay between art and perceived "reality". His unique body of work, straddling multiple cultures and languages, continues to

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

His face was ill-shaven, yellowish and long, and all of him looked clumsy, emaciated and lugubrious, as if nature had suffered from a toothache when creating him.

Snow day reading. I enjoyed the opening piece An Affair of Honor and I'm relatively certain I have read it before. Expats in Berlin grow red-faced over propriety.

Lik had an intriguing premise, an émigré actor is confronted with an unwelcome reminder of his homeland.

The Vane Sisters: Nabokov spoofs superstition in this grim tale. Though he offers us a character at a loss from her "odds and ids."

Visit To a Museum didn't work for me. It wasn't so much the backdrop of coincidence in the tale, but rather the fantastical finale which bored me.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies- every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost."

[viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

the stories in this collection are charming, beautifully written, and enjoyable. very much emigre stories. my favorite was "lik".

[Rafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Con las Las hermanas Vane pudo hacer una gran novela.

[Veronica]

The vane sisters was INCRED (although I wouldn’t have gotten the last acrostic paragraph puzzle w/o Nabokov’s help)!!! Also I think this is where Donna tartt got the name for bunny Corcoran?

[Seth Arnopole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I added Nabokov’s collected short stories to my queue over a decade ago, but I still haven’t tried to read them, as the prospect felt quite daunting. Happily, somebody left a copy of Nabokov’s Quartet on the free book table at work, and I decided that reading it would not be too overwhelming. The first two stories turned out to be the most compelling to me, and the last one (“Visit to a Museum”) had merit as well. “The Vane Sisters,” though it was one of the only titles I’d heard of before, did not click with me. Perhaps I am now ready to tackle the rest of Nabokov’s short stories. I’m sure I will accomplish this within the next decade...

[Mary D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Nabokov's writing. I love his sarcasm and haughtiness. But a story does need a beginning and an end that makes some sense or is at least somewhat attached. The writing style starts in perfect Nabokov style and then at the story's end WHAM it takes a turn that you not only cannot anticipate but cannot understand even after it is fully read.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like most Nabokov, you can flip to any random page and find a gem of a sentence, but there's a reason I've never seen these stories elsewhere.

[Varsha Ravi]

Nabokov’s Quartet is a collection of four short stories. An Affair of Honour opens the collection on a high note—comically absurd and slightly sinister, following a man who challenges his friend to a duel over a cheating spouse. Lik is an intense, psychological portrait of loneliness, reminiscent of Stefan Zweig’s work in its emotional depth. The Vane Sisters was more cryptic; I found myself rereading sections to grasp its layered meanings—interesting, but the payoff felt somewhat elusive. The final story, The Visit to the Museum, is a surreal, disorienting fever dream that left me baffled—intriguing, though not fully comprehensible to me.

[Scarlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nabokov's writing is definitely one of the most beautiful I have ever read. His sentences flow with such ease and are such elegant manifestations of style and substance in perfect coexistence! Unlike most collections of stories, all of these are unique and present a very distinct mood. Great work.

[K LeMon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm... Loved "An Affair of Honor," mostly liked "Lik" and "The Vane Sisters," and found "The Visit to the Museum" interesting in its phantasmagoric sense of panicky confusion, but it's not really a story or even character sketch.

[Rand Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I doubt this is a good version of the book, but it's Nabokov and you learn a lot from him.

[Angela Hui]

the vane sisters... :O

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

so incredibly good. here is my ranking :
1- Lik
2- The Visit to the Museum
3- The Vane Sisters
4- An Affair of Honor
Simply cannot wait to read more nabokov 🙌🏻

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

returning to nabokov’s writing is always like a nice warm bath for my brain

[Jen Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Vane Sisters was so good. I loved the part when he took an entire page to roast Cynthia for being a crusty art girl.

[Deepti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely writing! Affair of Honour was excellent. Quite liked Lik too. Vane sisters was mediocre and Visit to the museum had me skipping pages to get done!!

[Pieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Affair of Honor ~ ★★★★
Lik ~ ★★★★
The Vane Sisters ~ ★★★
The Visit to the Museum ~ ★★★

[Nile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read split between Viktoria Park and Staatsbibliothek - quality of short stories goes in ascending order.

[Brook Miscoski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read "An affair of honor" and have yet to get to the other 3 stories.

Potential Spoiler:

"An affair of honor" is Kafka-esque, except that we never start with any compassion for the main character.

Nearly at the outset you feel like throwing the book down and shouting "Kill the motherfucker, this is literature, not real life." And the book traces a miserable attempt to embrace that sentiment. But it's hard to empathsize with a character who can't get beyond his own vulgar visceral desires--who seems to have no more depth than does an animal.

Which is kind of interesting, in that in some ways the passionate, violent impulse in literature may be yet another one-dimensional take on the universe, yet one that we generally accept as humanizing.

One explanation is the creation of identity. There is not much demonstrated difference between a person who follows impulses out simply because well-suited, and a person who cannot because of feared inadequacy follow them. That is not humanizing. What we appreciate is the risk that some people are willing to take to create or preserve their identities.

"Live until you die" is good advice, and the main character attempts to take it. But he is incapable of anything beyond mere survival.

(Another take is that the book illustrates how much contempt we have for someone who prefers a universe of goods so completely different from our own, to the point that we cannot accept that the person accomplishes anything more than survival. But I think the author was not going for that, because if he was, certain elements of the story would be mere fat.)

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Vane Sisters," which I've reviewed elsewhere, is still among the cleverest stories I've ever read, particularly the last paragraph. But I'm reviewing "The Visit to the Museum," as I'm reading it online, and not in the collection with the other stories. "TVTTM" was a Kafkaesque, Lewis Carroll-esque trip down the rabbit hole of a crazy museum, where curators are sly bastards and the guests all obnoxious drunks; a place where the people "must first discuss the matter with the mayor, who has just died and has not yet been elected." It's a fun — and simultaneously unnerving — trip to the museum on behalf of a friend who wants the narrator to retrieve a painting there for him. But every possible oddity occurs, and the narrator finds himself transported into a place he's been exiled from, and all his despair comes true there. A strangely un-Nabokov tale, it still incorporates some of the best things about Nabokov's writing.

[Suncan Stone]

A collection of four short stories. The first one was my favourite, because it has a good psychological depiction of someone who is, well not the bravest man in the world, someone who would in most fiction be portrayed as an anti-character really, but you can really understand him and this brings him closer and turns him into the lead role with whome you can empathise. In some ways the character building is similar to the way Trier builds his character in Dogville and Mandarlay... The remaining three stories I did not find as interesting...

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stories: An Affair of Honor, Lik, The Vane Sisters, The Visit to the Museum. All somewhat Kafkaesque (which according to the introduction I’m not supposed to say) the last story being the most K—esque. #1— a man challenges his wife’s lover to a duel. #2 — a not very talented actor encounters an old enemy. #3 The title says it all. #4 A man agrees to do a favor for a friend and becomes lost in an Alice-in-Wonderland Museum.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Lolita and Pale Fire many years ago and had just a vague memory of enjoying Nabokov's prose. However, I thought his political/philosophical views were a bit off-putting. Nevertheless, after having come across this book on a street sale table, I found these four short stories to be gems. They work aesthetically, and although he would adamantly reject the notion, they are psychologically intriguing as well.

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stories, of which the first two (An Affair of Honor, Lik) are the more powerful: enigmatic, violent, surprising, and with writing that is evocative beyond cinematic, looking into the inner workings of unsettled minds. The second two (The Vane Sisters, The Visit to the Museum) are shorter, play dilettante games, and are generally less satisfying.

[Kris McCracken · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of four of Nabokov's short stories, published late in his life. I really liked the first one, which offers a lovely psychological depiction of a flawed fellow in a tricky situation. Two others I enjoyed, another less so. Decent. C+.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The judicious use of prose, between not quite flowery and sparse, is a give and take worth the attention. My favorite is the juxtaposition of two words that we otherwise would never have paired together. It works.

[Jennifer Wyld · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 short stories, well written, dark, of course...

[Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in bed, the last thing I did before sleep. The final story in it gave me one nightmare.

[Lyle D]

Nabokov's quartet by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1966), 1st ed