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‘King, Queen, Knave� represents the first flowering of Nabokov’s genius, the petals of which fall deciduously and deliriously throughout the novel. From Franz’s impressions of Berlin as a whirlwind of colours after he loses his glasses, to the little details only Nabokov is able to imbue his novels with, to the farcical and solipsistic characters, hopelessly tangled up in the web the writer, who twice makes and appearance, weaves around the novel, entrapped by the caprices of their creator. In many ways ‘King, Queen, Knave� is the most quintessentially Nabokovian written in Russian aside from ‘The Gift� the sense of whimsy mixed with vituperation he is able to create is only really replicated in some of his English language novels such as ‘Pnin� and ‘Pale Fire�.

Essentially ‘King, Queen, Knave� follows the story of Franz, Dreyer and Martha, a trio caught up in a love triangle so banal that one of them is blissfully unaware, the other vaguely indifferent and the other caught up in a passion which can only be explained, as with Emma Bovary, with the excitement of the affair rather than the attractiveness of her lover. Yet, beneath the banality Nabokov is able to constantly weave beauty, from the delicate flickers of sunlight on the street pavement to the impressionistic renderings of a city from the point-of-view of a half-blind Franz:

“Franz reached a plausible street corner. After much fussing and squinting he discovered the red blur of a bust stop which rippled and wavered like the support of a bathhouse when you dive under it. Almost directly the image of a yellow bus came into being�

‘King, Queen, Knave� is worth reading if only for the chance to become accustomed to Nabokov’s brilliance and to the aesthetic ideas which formed the base of all his art and which he continued to explore in his other novels.