The magician's doubts: Nabokov and the risks of fiction

Abstract

As a child in Russia, Vladimir Nabokov enjoyed conjuring: I loved doing simple tricks--turning water into wine, that kind of thing. In this engrossing book Michael Wood explores the blend of arrogance and mischief that makes Nabokov such a fascinating and elusive master of fiction.Michael Wood's study of Nabokov is a stunningly brilliant analysis of how, as he says, the sly idiot, the haughty mandarin, and the great, doubting magician get along together in works like Lolita and Ada.... In his own beautifully supple and attractive prose, [Wood] renders his insights with grace and wisdom. The Magician's Doubts is, quite simply, a wonderful book, not to be passed up.--Edward SaidThis is a fine example of an endangered species: the full- length book of literary criticism dedicated to the appreciation and interpretation of a single author, addressed to the general reader.... Reading The Magician's Doubts, we re-experience and recover ... pleasures of Nabokov's texts we may have forgotten or overlooked.--David Lodge, The New York Times Book ReviewWood's book is so thronged with pleasures, so acute in its insights, so replete with clear thoughts limpidly expressed, that one could...write a review of it consisting entirely of quotations from the text.... [It] offers us an entirely new set of insights into the work of a modern master.--John Banville, The New York Review of Books