The Luzhin Defense

✍ Scribed by Vladimir Nabokov

• Publisher: Vintage International
• Year: 1929
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 148 KB
• Edition: First Vintage International Edition (1990)
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0307787559

✦ Synopsis

{ Sept 2020 - epub revisions. Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, content separation, and epub format error checking. }

Paperback, 256 pages
Published 1929
Copyright by Vladimir Nabokov (1964)
First Vintage International Edition (1990)
Anthony Burgess - 99 Novels Best in English Since 1939
A chilling story of obsession and madness. Luzhin, a distracted, withdrawn boy, takes up chess as a refuge from everyday life. As he rises to the heights of grandmaster, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality as he moves inexorably towards 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 defence. Making masterly play of metaphor and imagery, The Luzhin Defense is the book that, of his early works, Nabokov felt 'contains and diffuses the greatest warmth'.
Nabokov's third novel, The Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost: in Luzhin' s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent's unexpected and unpredictable lines of assault.