König, Dame, Bube: ein Spiel mit dem Schiksal
Price: $750.00
Hard Cover. Berlin: Ullstein, 1930. 1st Edition. Very Good.
First German edition. Publisher's light beige cloth, lettered in red and black. About very good, with some toning to the front board and spine, some light soiling to the boards, spine very lightly cracked inside the front cover, lacking the front free endpaper, front flyleaf with a closed tear to the top half of the margin, some light spotting to the front flyleaf and title page, otherwise bright and clean pages. König, Dame, Bube (King, Queen, Knave) is the German edition of Nabokov's second novel, which was first published in Russian in 1928 under the title Korol, Dama, Valet. Nabokov wrote this novel while living as an émigré in Berlin, and, like many of his earliest works, it was published under his pseudonym V. Sirin, after the mythological Russian bird. Specifically, König, Dame, Bube tells the story of a young German man named Franz who moves to Berlin to work for his wealthy uncle, only to become involved in a love affair with his aunt. Notably, this story would not be published in English until 1968 after being significantly edited by the author and translated by his son Dmitri. Item #VN016
