The Story Archive

Despair

Vladimir Nabokov · 1934 CE · Novel · Russian · Modernist

A Berlin chocolate manufacturer meets a tramp on a hillside outside Prague and is certain he has found his exact double, though nobody else can see any likeness at all. Around this discovery he designs a crime he regards as a work of art, and writes it up for us with enormous vanity and much complaint about his readers. Nabokov's most direct quarrel with Dostoevsky, whom the narrator mocks by name inside the book.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalCrime / Noir
Theme
ObsessionIdentity & SelfGuilt & ConscienceAppearance vs Reality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
The DoubleAnti-HeroTrickster
Plot structure
Unreliable NarratorConfessionMistaken Identity
Symbol / motif
The MirrorThe MaskThe Letter
Conflict
vs Selfvs Person
Mode / tone
IronicModernistNoir
Culture / tradition
Russian

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