Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Introduction 1
4. Part One: Sexual Orientation
5. Chapter 1. A Filthy Look at Shakespeare’s Lolita 17
6. Chapter 2. Art as Afterglow (Bend Sinister) 46
7. Chapter 3. Perversion in Pnin 74
8. Chapter 4. Hermophobia (On Sexual Orientation and Reading Nabokov) 105
9. Part Two: Setting Nabokov Straight
10. Chapter 5. Reading Chernyshevsky in Tehran Nabokov and Nafisi 135
11. Chapter 6. Lolita in the Real World 148
12. Chapter 7. Blackwell’s Paradox and Fyodor’s Gift: A Kinder and Gentler Nabokov 161
13. Part Three: Reading Preposterously
14. Chapter 8. Litland The Allegorical Poetics of The Defense 181
15. Chapter 9. The Costs of Character: The Maiming of the Narrator in “A Guide to Berlin” 221
16. Chapter 10. The Meaning of “Life”: Nabokov in Code ( King, Queen, Knave and Ada) 233
17. Epilogue. What If Nabokov Had Written “The Double”: Reading Dostoevsky after Nabokov 269
18. Acknowledgments 285
19. Bibliography 287
20. Index 301