BEND SINISTER

First UK edition, first printing. Original black cloth lettered in silver to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by Eric Ayers. A better than very good copy, the binding firm with slight bumping to the spine tips, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents, with spotting to the top edge of the closed text-block and prelims, are otherwise clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. Complete with the lightly rubbed, nicked and marked dustwrapper that has a few short closed tears at the edges and is somewhat faded to the spine. Not price-clipped (15s net to the front flap).

The second of Nabokov's novels to be written in English (following 'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight') and the first to be written in America. Although the novel is set in an imaginary European city (Padukgrad), the work's examination of cruelty, totalitarian politics, as well as the tender portrait of the Krug family, was both topically and personally close to the bone (it may be the darkest of Nabokov's novels). In the introduction the author added to the 1964 edition, he describes the "main theme of Bend Sinister" as "the beating of Krug's loving heart, the torture an intense tenderness is subjected to — and it is for the sake of the pages about David [Krug's son] and his father that the book was written and should be read." (Field 0779).