Penguin Modern Classics

''Vladimir Nabokov was a literary genius'' David Lodge

''Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest'', Nabokov wrote of King, Queen, Knave. Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. ''If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in'' - Nabokov darts a glance to the reader - ''he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there...