Despair.

NABOKOV, Vladimir.

Item Number: 38769

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966.

First American edition of this inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime–his own murder. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with light shelfwear.

Despair is the seventh novel by Vladimir Nabokov, originally published in Russian, serially in the politicized literary journal Sovremennye zapiski during 1934. It was then published as a book in 1936, and translated to English by the author in 1937. It is generally acclaimed as one of Nabokov's better Russian novels, along with Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift (1938), and has a reasonable volume of literary criticism. Martin Amis ranked it second on his list of best Nabokov novels, with it trailing only Lolita.