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Vladimir Nabokov
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The Eye Paperback – September 5, 1990

by Vladimir Nabokov (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 107 ratings
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A farcical detective story and a profoundly refractive tale about a Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indiginities in the afterlife. • A wonderfully layered exploration of the vicissitudes of identity, appearance, and the loss of self.  

 Smurov, a lovelorn and excruciatingly self-conscious Russian tutor, shoots himself after a beating by his mistress' husband. Unsure whether his suicide has been successful or not, Smurov drifts around Berlin, observing his acquaintances, but finds he can discover very little about his own life from the opinions of his distracted, confused fellow-émigrés.
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  1. Print length
    128 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    September 5, 1990
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.3 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780679727231
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679727231
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Nabokov's fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Nabokov's protagonist, Smurov, is a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin, who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife.

From the Back Cover

Nabokov's fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Nabokov's protagonist, Smurov, is a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian emigre living in prewar Berlin, who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 067972723X
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (September 5, 1990)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780679727231
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679727231
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.3 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 107 ratings

About the author

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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri. Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing ficticvbn ral books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
107 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Alyssa corryn
5.0 out of 5 stars a difficult read
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2023
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This was a fun read! The story does get hard to follow from time to time. I look forward to rereading this one
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benshlomo
4.0 out of 5 stars Living Hell, Perhaps
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2011
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Let's face it, Vladimir Nabokov didn't really care about realism in his stories. That's probably why he's been so much misunderstood in the past. Readers tend to assume that he's like most novelists, and he's not.

Most novelists write stories intended to be taken at face value - we read their tales and say to ourselves, "Even if this story couldn't possibly happen in real life, it could in the narrator's world, and the narrator believes it." Well, I'd like to see anyone make that assumption about "The Eye". In it, a man tells the story of his humiliation and subsequent suicide; at the end, we can't be entirely sure whether the man is dead or alive. With all due respect, if you consider that realism, you should take two aspirin, drink plenty of liquids, and call me in the morning.

At the very least, the narrator believes that he is dead. He insists that all the events he experiences after he shoots himself are mere figments of his disembodied imagination. Nevertheless, he continues to go about his daily routine. As an émigré from the Russian Revolution living in Berlin (a group that Nabokov returned to many times), he naturally rents a room from a couple of other émigrés and takes to hanging out with them and the other boarders. He becomes fascinated with one of them, a man named Smurov, and tries to learn all he can about this person. Thus, as is the case with a lot of Nabokov's work, "The Eye" comes to resemble a sort of detective story, except that Smurov hasn't committed any crime other than lying about his past from time to time, so there's really nothing to detect. The narrator eventually concludes that, in many ways, Smurov and everyone else exist only in the opinions of others. They themselves have no reality outside of their reflections in other people's consciousnesses. Now, what do you suppose that means about the narrator himself?

The boarding house serves a few other people, of course. Two sisters run it, one married and one single. The single sister, nicknamed Vanya, attracts a lot of attention from the male boarders, and our narrator seems remarkably concerned as to whether or not she loves Smurov. It's partly his anxiousness over her feelings that leads the narrator to find out what the other boarders think of him, and this investigation that leads him to conclude that neither Smurov nor anyone else has any independent existence.

He draws a number of additional conclusions. One of the boarders keeps a daily diary and mails each day's entry to a friend in another town, for the friend's amusement and to keep himself from changing anything. His impressions will remain as fresh as the day he wrote them down. Our narrator finds this fascinating, and reflects on the possibility that one's existence may have a more permanent nature years after one's death than during one's lifetime. It makes a certain kind of sense, after all. During life, others may change their minds about you; after death, those opinions will remain the same, especially if they're written down. If you exist only in other's view of you, then your existence is more settled after that view stops changing, right?

He observes a local bookseller whose hobbies include consulting the spirits on a sort of Ouija board, and asserting that hidden spies for the new Soviet regime have infiltrated every aspect of his life. Both of these avocations go back on this man. His primary contact through the Ouija board is the spirit of a practical joker who loves to pretend to be some great historical figure and then causing the board to spell out some variant of "Gotcha!", and he misses the one genuine Soviet spy in the neighborhood.

Pretty intense, especially when compressed into Nabokov's shortest novel; it's barely 100 pages long. That's plenty of space for the narrator to gather views of Smurov from pretty nearly everyone in the building. This being Nabokov, however, you will not be surprised to learn that the information does not provide the narrator with a very clear idea of who Smurov is, and it's of dubious help to Smurov's love life. Without giving too much away, though, all this observation convinces the narrator that true happiness consists of refraining from action, restricting yourself to observation. One should, in other words, turn oneself into an eye.

For a scientist like Nabokov, this notion isn't as surprising as it might be, but we must bear in mind that Nabokov the writer loved tricks and puzzles. The narrator of "The Eye" has a few secrets that the reader eventually uncovers, which may explain why the narration gets a little hysterical at the end - so hysterical, in fact, that you'll have to decide for yourself how seriously to take the closing idea. One way or the other, though, with the observation and detective work, the puzzles and solutions, "The Eye" is a lot of fun.

And you thought great writers were a bunch of terribly serious chaps. Ha.

Benshlomo says, Great literature is a great game.
4 people found this helpful
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Gio
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Scream Ewe Scream We All Scream...
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2008
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... for more Nabokov! If only he'd been as prolific as Anthony Trollope. This short novella, written in Berlin in 1930, is not nearly the apex of Nab's oeuvre, but it's awfully good. Even when no one could mistake his lepidopterine syntax, it's fun to see him writing in a new genre with every book. The Eye is a tale in the 'doppelgänger' tradition of Poe's William Wilson, Hawthorne's Wakefield, and Melville's The Confidence Man, though there's no reason to assume that Nabokov was aware of his American forerunners. Since the whole novella is built around the reader's dawning suspicions, I can't say much more about the plot without spoiling your pleasure.

The Marxist Revolution makes a cameo appearance in The Eye - its Russian title was closer to 'The Spy' - as in nearly all of Nab's books. In a brief dismissal of historical determinism, he writes: "Luckily no such laws exist: a toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection. Everything is fluid, everything depends on chance, and all in vain were the efforts of that crabbed bougeois in Victorian checkered trousers, author of Das Kapital, fruit of insomnia and migraine. There is a titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one's life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy event that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life..." That, my friends, is not only an eloquent dismissal of Marxism but also a fine statement of evolutionary contingency.

Just one more passage from Nab's own words, intended to entice your reading:
"And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear, I swear I am happy. I have realized that the only happiness in this world is to observe, to spy, to watch, to scrutinize one self and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye. I swear that this is happiness."
Okay, I'll accept that, as long as this eye has another Nabokov novel to read.
29 people found this helpful
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Jeff LeVine
3.0 out of 5 stars Great opening, but somewhat lost me along the way
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020
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In the beginning I was immediately captivated, but twenty pages in, when the book switches from first person to a more observational mix and introduces new situations and new characters, it took me a while to find my sea legs. These new things were somehow less interesting than the more straight-forward opening section, though definitely more mysterious. The main character too, somewhat wore out his welcome, and turned into a bit of a bore. Set in the world of Russian expatriates living in Berlin in the 1920s, you do get some insight into that experience, Nabokov’s experience. It’s a short book, that has some merits, some great writing and an interesting concept / twist, even if what is done with it didn’t completely capture my affection.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Mr Volas
4.0 out of 5 stars Good otherwise
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2021
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Have t read it, took ages to know how to access it.
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An Leg
4.0 out of 5 stars good
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2017
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very intersting story and a quick read, unfortunatly the cover looks different than the picture profided
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