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  • Published: 22 June 2000
  • ISBN: 9780141181875
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $24.99

Ada or Ardor




Nabokov's 'other' great love story, following an extraordinary relationship across decades and continents

Written in mischievous and magically flowing prose, Ada or Ardor is a romance that follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van Veen on his uncle's country estate, in a 'dream-bright' America, through eighty years of rapture, as they cross continents, are continually parted and reunited, come to learn the strange truth about their singular relationship and, decades later, put their extraordinary experiences into words.

  • Published: 22 June 2000
  • ISBN: 9780141181875
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Vladimir Nabokov

One of the twentieth century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977) was born in St Petersburg, but left Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

His first novel in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, published in 1941. His other books include Ada or Ardor (1969), Laughter in the Dark (1933), Pale Fire (1962), the short story collection Details of a Sunset (1976) and Lolita (1955), his best-known novel.

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