was the first novel Nabokov wrote after his flight from Europe to the USA in 1941. During his first six years in America he taught Russian literature in several universities, researched butterflies at Harvard, composed the critical biography

(1944), wrote reviews for

and

, and worked on his novel. Its publication in 1947, five years after he optimistically told his editor “it will be ready for you in three or four months”, was a greeted with relief by its exhausted author.

reflects its troubled gestation. On the one hand it is a dystopian novel bearing comparison with Orwell’s

(1949), and J.D. Beresford and Esmé Wynne-Tyson’s

(1944) in its engagement with the totalitarian…

1998 words

Citation: Norman, William. "Bend Sinister". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 June 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6378, accessed 21 November 2024.]