The Humour of Vladimir Nabokov

Many critics classify Vladimir Nabokov as a highbrow humourist, a refined wordsmith overly fond of playful puzzles and private in-jokes whose art appeals primarily to an intellectually-sophisticated readership.

This study presents a more balanced portrait, placing equal emphasis on the broader, earthier humour that is such a marked feature of Nabokov's writing. It draws on the human body and all things physical for its laughs: sex and scatology, farce and slapstick.

Moving between the metaphysical and the physical, the cosmic and the comic, mind and matter, it presents Nabokov as a writer at home in both high and low forms of humour. He is a comedian capable of producing as many belly laughs as brainteasers, and of appealing to a much wider readership than is commonly supposed.