Pale Fire is regarded by many as Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece. The novel has been hailed as one of the most striking early examples of postmodernism and has become a famous test case for theories about reading because of the apparent impossibility of deciding between several radically different interpretations. Does the book have two narrators, as it first appears, or one? How much is fantasy and how much is reality? Whose fantasy and whose reality...

Argues that lyric making is universal across cultures, and uses the example of Shakespeare's "Sonnets" to showcase the human disposition to play with lyrical patterns.

"This is a comprehensive account of the evolutionary origins of art and storytelling. Brian Boyd explains why we tell stories, how our minds are shaped to understand them, and what difference an evolutionary understanding of human nature makes to stories we love."--Global Books in Print.

"VLADIMIR NABOKOV was hailed by Salman Rushdie as the most important writer ever to cross the boundary between one language and another. A Russian émigré who began writing in English after his forties, Nabokov was a trilingual author, equally competent in Russian, English, and French. A gifted and tireless translator, he bridged the gap between languages nimbly and joyously. Here, collected for the first time in one volume as Nabokov always wished,...