Bend Sinister

By Vladimir Nabokov

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic.  While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state.

Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.  In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307787880

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov (San Petersburgo, 1899-Montreux, 1977), uno de los más extraordinarios escritores del siglo XX, nació en el seno de una acomodada familia aristocrática. En 1919, a consecuencia de la Revolución Rusa, abandonó su país para siempre. Tras estudiar en Cambridge, se instaló en Berlín, donde empezó a publicar sus novelas en ruso con el seudónimo de V. Sirin. En 1937 se trasladó a París, y en 1940 a los Estados Unidos, donde fue profesor de literatura en varias universidades. En 1960, gracias al gran éxito comercial de Lolita, pudo abandonar la docencia, y poco después se trasladó a Montreux, donde residió, junto con su esposa Véra, hasta su muerte. En Anagrama se le ha dedicado una «Biblioteca Nabokov» que recoge una amplísima muestra de su talento narrativo. En «Compactos» se han publicado los siguientes títulos: Mashenka, Rey, Dama, Valet, La defensa, El ojo, Risa en la oscuridad, Desesperación, El hechicero, La verdadera vida de Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pnin, Pálido fuego, Habla, memoria, Ada o el ardor, Invitado a una decapitación y Barra siniestra; La dádiva, Cosas transparentes, Una belleza rusa, El original de Laura y Gloria pueden encontrarse en «Panorama de narrativas», mientras que sus Cuentos completos están incluidos en la colección «Compendium». Opiniones contundentes, por su parte, ha aparecido en «Argumentos».

Reviews for Bend Sinister

[marse_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book reminded me a a little of "Invitation to a Beheading" because of the nightmarish, inescapable feeling of doom throughout the story. However, while "Invitiation" had a kind of Alice-in-Wonderlandish absurdity to it that makes it almost charming, this book is filled with sharp punches to the gut that are too disturbing to be charming. It is the story of one man's attempt to escape a totalitarian regime. Worth reading, but not really a pleasant experience.

[castlelass · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dystopian novel set in an unnamed country in the city of Padukgrad, protagonist Adam Krug is a well-known philosopher with an eight-year-old son. His wife died but he cannot bring himself to tell his son. The Ekwilist movement, the “Party of the Average Man,” is run by dictator Paduk, a former schoolmate. Krug is asked to support the party, but refuses. Published in 1947, the Ekwilist party is obviously based on a totalitarian regime.

The preface to this book indicates it should be read as a spoof, however, it did not read as humorous to me. The writing is erudite. I enjoyed the relationship between Krug and his son, whom he obviously loves dearly.

“And what agony, thought Krug the thinker, to love so madly a little creature, formed in some mysterious fashion (even more mysterious to us than it had been to the very first thinkers in their pale olive gloves) by the fusion of two mysteries, or rather two sets of a trillion of mysteries each; formed by a fusion which is, at the same time, a matter of choice and a matter of chance and a matter of pure enchantment; thus formed and then permitted to accumulate trillions of its own mysteries; the whole suffused with consciousness, which is the only real thing in the world and the greatest mystery of all.”

The ending is horrifying. I do not want to spoil it, but if you are easily disturbed by what you read, I would give this one a pass.

2.5 (based on personal enjoyment, not literary merit)

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One thing I find hardest to do is blast a novel by a well-known, widely-admired, great writer. So I struggle to write this review of Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov. I read this novel long before I started keeping track of my reading with this journal more than 10 years ago. Perhaps I notice the things which bothered me more now that I have experience writing these reviews. Reading with a possible public review in mind certainly has affected these writings.Nabokov is well-known for his meticulous pursuit of the correct word in a sentence. I have heard tell he sometimes spent hours trying to find a precise word to fill a blank in a sentence, of a chapter, of a novel. I admit to sometimes searching for a particular word, but I never spent more than a few minutes – sometimes with the help of a dictionary and a thesaurus. When I began re-reading Bend Sinister, I was immediately struck by his diction. In the first chapter, he wrote, “An oblong puddle in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see nether sky. Surrounded. I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size” (1). Can readers spot the two “made-up words”? Can you spot words that seem just a bit pretentious? Not to forget to mention some rather strange syntax?Now, I pride myself on a higher than usual vocabulary, but on the other hand I have long fought the fight against obfuscation in my diction. I suspect the latter was a reaction to the legalese I suffered through for about 15 years. I might also blame my admiration for Hemingway, that is, his diction not his misogyny. I even find this paragraph a bit pretentious. What is a reader/writer to do?Well, I have decided. I am going to tell the world I believe the emperor has no clothes or, rather, the emperor has too many dictionary pages stuck to his crown. Here is part of another paragraph my reading notes labeled as poetic. Nabokov wrote, “November trees, poplars, I imagine, two of them growing straight out of the asphalt: all of them in the cold bright sun, bright richly furrowed bark and an intricate sweep of numberless burnished bare twigs, old gold—because getting more of the falsely mellow sun in the higher air. Their immobility is in contrast with the spasmodic ruffling of the inset reflection—for the visible emotion of a tree is the mass of its leaves, and there remain hardly more than thirty-seven or so here and there on one side of the tree. They just flicker a little, of a neutral tint, but burnished by the sun to the same ikontinct…” (2). “Ikontinct” is not in my OED or my Random House Dictionary of well-over twenty-four hundred pages. It is amazing how a single word can spoil otherwise wonderful poetic phrasing. Okay, so now I must choose: slog through hundreds of pages with who knows how many unidentifiable words, or revert with a measure of pretension of my own to that old Latin phrase: Quot Libros, Quam Breve Tempus. Look it up if you wish. 2 stars.--Jim, 3/5/17

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nabokov's novel is set in a fictitious European city known as Padukgrad, where a government arises following the philosophy known as "Ekwilism", which discourages the idea of anyone being different from anyone else, and promotes the state as the prominent good in society. The story begins with the protagonist, Adam Krug, who had just lost his wife to an unsuccessful surgery, asked to sign and deliver a speech to the leader of the new government by the head of the university and his colleagues. However he refuses. This government is led by a man named Paduk and his "Party of the Average Man." As it happens, the world-renowned philosopher Adam Krug was, in his youth, a classmate of Paduk, at which period he had bullied him and referred to him disparagingly as "the Toad". Paduk arrests many of the people close to Krug and those against his Ekwilist philosophy, and attempts to get the influential Professor Krug to promote the state philosophy to help stomp out dissent and increase his personal prestige. The novel is effective in tone and demonstrates Nabokov's unique style of word play.

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On the hand, the main reason I was reading this is because from the plot summary I thought it would be a good "intro-to-Nabokov" book to give to a young person, but it turns out there's a minor subplot where a 15 year old girl tries to seduce the protagonist and then later gets raped by like 50 guys. OH WELP. Hey Nabokov you already treated this subject matter to perfect in one book how about you keep it out of your others. Also lay off the homophobia while you're at it, it's wearying.That said, this is a much more coherent and therefore better novel than Ada. So far the first Nabokov novel I've read with a sympathetic protagonist, which makes the (wackily metafictional) ending touching in a conventionally enjoyable way.

[figre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an entertaining and intriguing novel. It is a story set in a time slightly different than any that does or has actually existed – a strife-torn unnamed European country that is being ruled by a dictator who happens to be the school-time “friend” of the novel’s protagonist, a famous philosopher named Professor Adam Krug. The tone of the novel is established in the first chapter with a ridiculous, although funny in a catch-22 sort of way, situation in which Krug is allowed to cross a bridge, only to be turned back because papers are not appropriately signed. On returning, the guards on the side of the bridge that first let him cross will not let him come back. And so, for a short time, he is between the two worlds.The novel itself is the story of various groups trying to bring Krug and the dictator together, each for their own ends. This includes the dictator’s desire to reconcile. In the end, the dictator finds Krug’s weak spot, but this only leads to additional tragedy. The unveiling of that tragedy was like watching a slow motion car crash – the reader can tell what is coming, but watching that ultimate disaster occur holds its own weird enchantment.The novels contains humor and tragedy and satire and truth, and Nabokov handles it all so skillfully we almost do not see how much is being accomplished. And then I went back and read the author’s new introduction (new as of publication of this edition – 1964). And the story became that much better. And now I want to go back and reread it with this new found knowledge. Nabokov was playing even more games in the writing than I first suspected. And, the way he plays games, you can’t even be sure he isn’t playing games in the introduction. Don’t read too much about this novel before diving in. Read it. Then learn more about what it is. Then read it again. And, as I am sure I will do, read it one more time.

[lastweeksapocalypse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ah, Nabokov, my favorite synesthete.The beginning of this book is kind of slow, though it works through parts of it (in parts, it feels like one is being led; in others, it feels like one is trudging). Overall, I would say it is what one expects of Nabokov: beautiful, somewhat self-conscious writing, engaging description, interludes of wordplay, and so forth. I admit that this book was kind of difficult to get through (the first five pages took me a week), but was good once I got into it. Exposition did not feel forced, which is always nice. The ending was... strange.In terms of ideas, I think this is a very excellent totalitarian regime, and a plausible dystopia (perhaps). Definitely should not serve as an introduction to Nabokov, because it is so slow (though I also do not think that Lolita ought to be one's introduction to Nabokov, since it is so taboo [even though it was my own introduction to Nabokov]). I don't know what I would recommend in its place.

[ascapola_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Clearly a very clever book that works on different levels - a description of a rather pathetic but vicious totalitarian state, comedy, the compromises a proud man makes when in extremis.On balance I didn't really enjoy this book - it required very close attention to understand.

[rodneywelch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Many people consider it among his weakest books -- "Lolita" and "Pale Fire" set the bar pretty high -- and while it lacks the richness of the others, it's an immensely readable story, as I recall. Also, with "Invitation to a Beheading," it ranks among Nabokov's most political books, although he always denied he was in any way a political novelist. Still, it's impossible to read this story of a barbaric police state and not think of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.