Vladimir Nabokov, Zashchita Luzhina [Luzhin's Defense / The Defense]

Emily Collins (University of Bristol)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1930

Places

Russia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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The Luzhin Defense

[

Zashchita Luzhina

] was written in 1929, when Nabokov was thirty. Initially published in three long instalments in the Paris-based émigré journal

Sovremennye zapiski

[

Contemporary Notes

] between October 1929 and April 1930,

The Luzhin Defense

was the first of Nabokov's novels whose quality, in Brian Boyd's words, “made it impossible to ignore him any longer” (

The Russian Years

, 342). Concurring with Nabokov's own sense of the novel as a breakthrough, Ivan Bunin, the most established writer of the emigration, commented: “This kid has snatched a gun and done away with the whole older generation, myself included” (quoted in Boyd,

The Russian Years

, 343). Despite these buoyant evaluations, the novel (first published in English translation as

The Defense

in 1964)…

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1747 words

Citation: Collins, Emily. "Zashchita Luzhina". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 September 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8925, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Vladimir Nabokov, Zashchita Luzhina [Luzhin's Defense / The Defense]

Dates

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