Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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Vladimir Nabokov, born in Saint Petersburg in 1899, published his first nine novels in Russian under the pen name V. Sirin, for the émigré readers of Berlin and Paris. In May 1940 he reached New York with his wife Véra and their son Dmitri and started again in English, teaching at Wellesley and Cornell and working on butterflies at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Lolita, turned down by five American publishers, came out in Paris in 1955; when Putnam published it in the United States in 1958 it sold 100,000 copies in three weeks. Chess, butterflies, wordplay and narrators who cannot be trusted run through almost everything he wrote, in both languages. This guide covers his fourteen key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1926–1969 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Vladimir Nabokov’s best-known books are Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962) and Pnin (1957), written in English, and The Defense (1930) and The Gift (1938) from his Russian years. He wrote seventeen novels, nine in Russian and eight in English. Start with Lolita, or with Pnin if you want a shorter, gentler way in. Lolita is also one of the best-selling books of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold.
Where to Start with Vladimir Nabokov
If you want his defining book
→ Lolita (1955) — the novel that made him famous, and still argued over.
If you want something gentler first
→ Pnin (1957) — a short campus novel about an exiled professor.
If you want a literary puzzle
→ Pale Fire (1962) — a poem, a commentary and a hidden story.
If you want his Russian novels
→ The Defense (1930) — a chess genius who cannot live outside the game.
14 Vladimir Nabokov Books, in Order
Mary
Mashen’ka, his first novel, published in Berlin by Slovo under the name V. Sirin. Lev Ganin, a former White Army officer in a Berlin boarding house, learns that his neighbour Alfyorov is married to Mary, his first love, who is about to arrive from Russia; he plots to meet her train instead. It appeared in English in 1970, translated by Michael Glenny with Nabokov.
King, Queen, Knave
Korol’, dama, valet: Franz, a young man from the provinces, comes to Berlin to work in the department store of his rich uncle Dreyer and starts an affair with Dreyer’s wife Martha, who plans to drown her husband. Nabokov called it “the gayest” of his novels. The 1968 English version, made with his son Dmitri, changed the book considerably; Jerzy Skolimowski filmed it loosely in 1972.
The Defense
Zashchita Luzhina, also published as The Luzhin Defense. Luzhin, a withdrawn boy who becomes a chess grandmaster, breaks down during a match against the Italian Turati; his wife and doctors try to keep chess out of his life, but he comes to see his own life as a game. Translated by Michael Scammell with Nabokov in 1964, it was filmed as The Luzhin Defence (2000) with John Turturro.
Glory
Podvig (“feat” or “exploit”), published in Paris. Martin Edelweiss, a Swiss-Russian who fled the Revolution as a boy, studies at Cambridge, is turned down by Sonia Zilanov, and finally slips across the border into Soviet Russia and disappears. Dmitri Nabokov’s English translation, revised by his father, appeared in 1971.
Laughter in the Dark
Kamera obskura, serialised in 1932–33. Albinus, a wealthy Berlin art critic, leaves his wife for Margot, a seventeen-year-old he meets in a cinema who wants to be an actress, and is robbed and tormented by her and her lover, the painter Axel Rex, after a car crash leaves him blind. Unhappy with the 1936 English version, Camera Obscura, Nabokov rewrote it himself as Laughter in the Dark (1938). Tony Richardson filmed it in 1969.
Despair
Otchayanie, serialised in 1934 and published as a book in Berlin in 1936. Hermann, a chocolate manufacturer, meets a tramp named Felix whom he believes to be his double, and kills him to collect his own life insurance; he sees the murder as a work of art, but the two men do not actually look alike. Nabokov’s own translation of 1937 was mostly destroyed by bombing, and he revised it in the mid-1960s. Rainer Werner Fassbinder filmed it in 1978 with Dirk Bogarde, from a script by Tom Stoppard.
Invitation to a Beheading
Priglashenie na kazn’, serialised in 1935–36 and published as a book in Paris in 1938. Cincinnatus C., a thirty-year-old teacher, waits in prison to be executed for “gnostical turpitude”, while his executioner, M’sieur Pierre, poses as a fellow prisoner. Nabokov said he was “completely ignorant” of Kafka when he wrote it, and that this was the novel he held in the highest esteem. Dmitri Nabokov translated it in 1959.
The Gift
Dar, his last Russian novel, written mostly in Berlin between 1935 and 1937. Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, a young émigré poet in Berlin, falls in love with Zina Mertz, tries to write the life of his explorer father, and writes a mocking biography of the critic Nikolay Chernyshevsky. The journal Sovremennye zapiski printed it in 1938 without that fourth chapter; the complete novel appeared only in 1952, and in English in 1963.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
His first novel in English, written in Paris in 1938–39 and published by New Directions in 1941. The narrator, V., sets out to write the life of his half-brother, the Russian-born English novelist Sebastian Knight, to correct a shallow biography by Knight’s former secretary, and goes looking for the woman Sebastian loved at the end of his life.
Bend Sinister
Written in the United States in 1945–46. In a small dictatorship ruled by Paduk, founder of the creed of Ekwilism and once bullied at school as “the Toad”, the philosopher Adam Krug refuses to endorse the regime after the death of his wife Olga; the state takes his young son David. Near the end, Nabokov steps into the book to tell the reader that Krug never existed.
Lolita
Humbert Humbert, a European scholar in America, narrates his abuse of Dolores Haze, whom he meets when she is twelve and whose mother he marries to stay near her. Rejected by Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus and Doubleday, it was published in Paris by Olympia Press in September 1955; Graham Greene named it one of the best books of the year. Putnam’s American edition of 1958 sold 100,000 copies in three weeks. It is on Time’s 100 best novels and the Modern Library’s 100 best novels.
Pnin
Timofey Pnin, a Russian émigré professor at Waindell College, gets on the wrong train to a lecture, is visited by an ex-wife who wants money, and befriends her gifted son Victor. Several chapters first appeared in The New Yorker. The narrator, who turns out to be a Russian-American academic and lepidopterist, is not as reliable as he seems. It was a finalist for the 1958 National Book Award, the first of Nabokov’s seven nominations.
Pale Fire
A 999-line poem in four cantos by the murdered American poet John Shade, framed by a foreword, a commentary and an index by his neighbour Charles Kinbote, who uses the notes to tell his own story of Zembla, a northern kingdom, its exiled king and an assassin named Gradus. Mary McCarthy praised it at length; Dwight Macdonald called it “unreadable”. It is on the Modern Library’s 100 best novels and Time’s 100 best novels.
Ada, or Ardor
His longest novel, over 600 pages, set on Antiterra, an alternate Earth where Russia and America have merged and electricity is banned. Van Veen, writing in his nineties, tells of his lifelong love affair with Ada, whom he first meets as a child at the family estate of Ardis and who turns out to be his sister. It reached number four on the New York Times bestseller list.
In What Order to Read Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov wrote no series, so you can start anywhere. His work falls into two halves: nine Russian novels written in Berlin and Paris between 1926 and 1938, and eight English novels written in America and Switzerland from 1941 to 1974. The years on this page are those of the first editions in the original language.
Most English readers meet the Russian novels last, and so did English-language publishers: after Lolita made him famous, Nabokov and his son Dmitri translated them between 1959 and 1971, often revising as they went. That makes it reasonable to read the English novels first and then go back to The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift.
A reading path
1. Pnin (1957)
2. Lolita (1955)
3. The Defense (1930)
4. Pale Fire (1962)
5. The Gift (1938)
Everything Else Vladimir Nabokov Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 17 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels and novellas
5
5 books · 1938–2009
- 1938The Eyea short novel, serialised in 1930; in English 1965
- 1972Transparent Thingsa short late novel about an American editor, Hugh Person
- 1974Look at the Harlequins!his last completed novel, narrated by an émigré writer much like himself
- 1986The Enchantera Russian novella written in Paris in 1939, translated by Dmitri Nabokov after his death
- 2009The Original of Laurahis unfinished last novel, published from his index cards
Memoir and interviews
3
3 books · 1951–1973
- 1951Speak, Memoryhis memoir of 1903–1940, first published in the US as Conclusive Evidence; revised edition 1966
- 1954Drugie beregahis own Russian version of the memoir
- 1973Strong Opinionsinterviews, letters and articles
Stories, poems and plays
4
4 books · 1958–1995
- 1958Nabokov’s Dozenthirteen stories
- 1969Poems and Problemspoems in Russian and English, and chess problems
- 1974Lolita: A Screenplayhis own script for Kubrick’s film
- 1995The Stories of Vladimir Nabokovthe collected stories
Criticism, lectures and translation
5
5 books · 1944–1983
- 1944Nikolai Gogola short critical book
- 1964Eugene Oneginhis literal translation of Pushkin, with a long commentary
- 1980Lectures on Literaturehis Cornell lectures on Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Joyce and others
- 1981Lectures on Russian Literaturelectures on Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov and others
- 1983Lectures on Don Quixotehis Harvard lectures on Cervantes
The years · 1899–1977
Quick facts about Vladimir Nabokov
- Known for
- Intricate, playful novels in Russian and then English, narrated by people who cannot be trusted, above all Lolita (1955).
- 1899
- Born in Saint Petersburg
- 1926
- Mary
- 1940
- Emigrates to the United States
- 1955
- Lolita
- 1977
- Dies in Montreux
- Born
- 22 April 1899, Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Education
- Trinity College, Cambridge, BA 1922
- Lived
- Berlin 1922–37, Paris 1937–40, United States 1940–61 (citizen 1945), then Montreux
- Taught
- Wellesley College from 1941; Cornell University, 1948–1959
- Married
- Véra Slonim, in 1925; their son Dmitri was born in 1934
- Died
- 2 July 1977, Montreux, Switzerland
The red mark is 1955: Lolita, published in Paris after five American publishers turned it down.
How Vladimir Nabokov Writes: Two Languages, Unreliable Narrators
Nabokov had two careers. As V. Sirin he wrote nine Russian novels for a small émigré readership, then switched to English with The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, written in Paris in 1938–39. Later he took charge of the English versions of the Russian books, often working with his son Dmitri and rewriting rather than just correcting: he rewrote Camera Obscura as Laughter in the Dark, changed King, Queen, Knave substantially in 1968, and translated Lolita into Russian himself in 1967.
His best-known narrators are artists of their own lives who cannot see what the reader sees. Hermann in Despair calls his murder a work of art, though his victim does not even resemble him; Humbert Humbert dresses up abuse in beautiful prose; Kinbote in Pale Fire turns another man’s poem into a story about himself. Nabokov also plays openly with the reader: anagrams of his own name hide in King, Queen, Knave, and in Bend Sinister he steps in to say that Krug never existed.
Chess and butterflies are more than hobbies in the books. The Defense is built around a chess player, and Poems and Problems (1969) includes chess problems he composed. As a lepidopterist at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology he described the Karner blue and proposed that the Polyommatus blue butterflies reached the Americas in waves across the Bering Strait, a theory genetic research supported in 2011. For writers with the same love of games and invented worlds, see Authors like Vladimir Nabokov.
Frequently asked questions about Vladimir Nabokov’s books
How many books has Vladimir Nabokov written?
Seventeen novels, nine in Russian and eight in English, plus a memoir, stories, poems, plays, lectures and translations. Fourteen are the key books on this page. His other novels, The Eye, Transparent Things and Look at the Harlequins!, are listed below with the rest of his work, as are the novella The Enchanter and the unfinished The Original of Laura, both published after his death.
What are Vladimir Nabokov’s books in order?
Mary (1926), King, Queen, Knave (1928), The Defense (1930), Glory (1932), Laughter in the Dark (1933), Despair (1936), Invitation to a Beheading (1938), The Gift (1938), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), Pale Fire (1962) and Ada, or Ardor (1969). The first eight were written in Russian; the years are those of the first Russian editions.
Where should I start with Vladimir Nabokov?
With Lolita (1955), the book that made him famous. If you would rather begin with something shorter and gentler, read Pnin (1957), about an exiled Russian professor at an American college.
What is Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous book?
Lolita, published in Paris in 1955 and in the United States in 1958, where it sold 100,000 copies in its first three weeks. It is on Time’s list of the 100 best novels, Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century and the Modern Library’s 100 best novels.
What order should I read Vladimir Nabokov’s books in?
For his best-known English novels, read Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire. For the Russian novels in translation, The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading or The Gift are good starting points. Ada, or Ardor, his longest and densest book, is best left until you know some of the shorter novels.
What is Pale Fire about?
Pale Fire (1962) presents a 999-line poem by the murdered American poet John Shade, followed by a foreword, commentary and index from his neighbour Charles Kinbote, whose notes gradually reveal a second story: his own, about Zembla, a distant northern kingdom, and its exiled king.
Did Vladimir Nabokov write in English or Russian?
Both. He wrote his first nine novels in Russian under the pen name V. Sirin while living in Berlin and Paris. His first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, was written in Paris in 1938–39 and published in 1941, after he moved to the United States in 1940. From then on he wrote his novels in English.
Why is Lolita controversial, and is it based on a true story?
It is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a man who sexually abuses his twelve-year-old stepdaughter, in prose persuasive enough that readers still argue about how it works on them. Five American publishers turned it down; France banned it from December 1956 for two years, British customs were told to seize copies, and the Cincinnati Public Library banned it in 1958. It is not a true story, but the scholar Alexander Dolinin has pointed to the 1948 kidnapping of eleven-year-old Sally Horner, which the novel mentions, as a likely source.
Has Lolita been made into a film?
Twice: by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and by Adrian Lyne in 1997. Nabokov received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of Kubrick’s film, although Kubrick and James Harris rewrote most of it; his own version was published as Lolita: A Screenplay in 1974. Laughter in the Dark (1969), Despair (1978) and The Luzhin Defence (2000) were also filmed.
Did Vladimir Nabokov win the Nobel Prize?
No. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature but never won. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, the first time with Pnin in 1958. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, on 2 July 1977.
Footnotes
- Vladimir Nabokov — Wikipedia
- Vladimir Nabokov bibliography — Wikipedia
- Lolita — Wikipedia
- Pale Fire — Wikipedia
- Laughter in the Dark — Nabokov bibliography (vnbiblio)
- Invitation to a Beheading — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
— Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966), the opening line
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