Tellingly, the novel opens with Ganin confined in a broken-down lift with only Alfyorov, his exasperatingly optimistic compatriot, for company. His few, fleeting days with Mary constitute ‘a life that was much more real, much more intense than the life lived by his shadow in Berlin.’
Ganin, the protagonist of Nabokov’s first novel, is holed up in Berlin, rhapsodising about a teenage love affair long since recalibrated in ‘the labyrinth of memory.’ Drawing on his own experiences in exile from 1920s Russia, Nabokov sketches a bleak portrait of émigré life: Ganin is ‘mortally depressed’, absorbed in his recollections of Mary to the extent that he becomes ‘unaware of time’. Vintage International: 1989, 114pages (Paperback) Vladimir Nabokov, Mary (Mashen’ka), translated by Michael Glenny and Vladimir Nabokov
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