Glory, paperback/vladimir nabokov

Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twenty-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him.

Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he decides to embark upon a “perilous, daredevil project” — an illegal attempt to reenter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919.

He succeeds — but at a terrible cost.

“Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.

” — John Updike.