The Tragedy of Mister Morn

The largest and most significant work by Vladimir Nabokov, published a full hundred years after it was created! “The Tragedy of Mr. Morn” (1924), the largest and most significant work by Vladimir Nabokov before the mid-1920s; during the author’s lifetime it was not published. For the first time—one hundred years after it was written—it appears as a separate edition. The sharp plot of the “Tragedy,” shifting levels of reality and illusion, fantasy and vividness, in the opinion of B. Boyd, anticipated the style of the mature Nabokov—especially in such enigmatic novels as “Solus Rex” and “Pale Fire.”

On top of the classic love triangle plot—infidelity, flight, and revenge—an alternative plan of reality is drawn in a thoroughly Nabokov-like, subtle way, in which only the magic of creation can transform the terrible actuality of the rebellious northern capital of a brilliant yet doomed kingdom.

The edition includes commentary and an Appendix, where prose retellings of “The Tragedy,” working notes, early versions, and new archival materials are published.