Nabokov's Final Riddle: Literary Prank Master's Post-Mortem Novel

(Wired) - He may be dead, but this fall Vladimir Nabokov is back with a new novel, The Original of Laura—or at least the beta version. Before he died in 1977, the author of Lolita and Pale Fire asked his family to burn this last, unfinished work. But after three decades of soul-searching, his son, Dmitri, has decided to finally publish the unusual manuscript, written on 138 numbered index cards now yellowed with age. Nabokov routinely composed on such cards, shuffling and reshuffling the deck as he wrote. It was like constructing a puzzle. Continued

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