Nabokov (Vladimir) The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

London, Editions Poetry London, 1945.

First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

Nabokov’s first novel in English and the first published under his own name, written in Paris in 1938–39 after nine Russian novels as V. Sirin. The narrator, V., researches a biography of his half-brother, the novelist Sebastian Knight, answering a rival biography, and the book ends by hinting that V. may be Sebastian himself. First published by New Directions in 1941; this is the first UK edition. Critics have seen it as an early forerunner of postmodernism.