The Defense, 9780241720486
Paperback
Chess genius loses himself in the game, risking everything.

$22.37

  • Paperback

    192 pages

  • Release Date

    22 April 2025

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Summary

The Defense: A Novel of Chess and Madness

Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel is the dazzling story of the coarse, strange yet oddly endearing chess-playing genius Luzhin. Discovering his prodigious gift in boyhood and rising to the rank of International Grandmaster, Luzhin develops a lyrical passion for chess that renders the real world a phantom. As he confronts the fiery, swift-swooping Italian Grandmaster Turati, he brings into play his carefully devised defense. Making masterly play…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780241720486
ISBN-10:0241720486
Author:Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Scammell
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin Classics
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:192
Release Date:22 April 2025
Weight:146g
Dimensions:197mm x 129mm x 12mm
About The Author

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even ‘God’s own novelist’ (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

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