The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. It is first and foremost a compelling narrative … narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country’s foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug’s support in order to validate the new regime.
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BEND SINISTER stands at the outer limits of dystopian political fantasy.
Though Nabokov has denied that he intended the novel as social commentary, it is a richly nuanced portrayal of a cultured intellectual caught up in the madness of a tyrannical police state.
The story takes place in a fictional central European country, Padukgrad, endowed with …