Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Transparent Things
    Transparent Things
    Transparent Things
    Audiobook3 hours

    Transparent Things

    Written by Vladimir Nabokov

    Narrated by Christopher Lane

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero—sullen, gawky Hugh Person—to Switzerland . . .As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, aftermultiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride. . . . Eight years later—following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment—Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past. . . . The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects."—Martin Amis

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 20, 2011
    ISBN9781441873507
    Transparent Things
    Author

    Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Nabokov (San Petersburgo, 1899-Montreux, 1977), uno de los más extraordinarios escritores del siglo XX, nació en el seno de una acomodada familia aristocrática. En 1919, a consecuencia de la Revolución Rusa, abandonó su país para siempre. Tras estudiar en Cambridge, se instaló en Berlín, donde empezó a publicar sus novelas en ruso con el seudónimo de V. Sirin. En 1937 se trasladó a París, y en 1940 a los Estados Unidos, donde fue profesor de literatura en varias universidades. En 1960, gracias al gran éxito comercial de Lolita, pudo abandonar la docencia, y poco después se trasladó a Montreux, donde residió, junto con su esposa Véra, hasta su muerte. En Anagrama se le ha dedicado una «Biblioteca Nabokov» que recoge una amplísima muestra de su talento narrativo. En «Compactos» se han publicado los siguientes títulos: Mashenka, Rey, Dama, Valet, La defensa, El ojo, Risa en la oscuridad, Desesperación, El hechicero, La verdadera vida de Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pnin, Pálido fuego, Habla, memoria, Ada o el ardor, Invitado a una decapitación y Barra siniestra; La dádiva, Cosas transparentes, Una belleza rusa, El original de Laura y Gloria pueden encontrarse en «Panorama de narrativas», mientras que sus Cuentos completos están incluidos en la colección «Compendium». Opiniones contundentes, por su parte, ha aparecido en «Argumentos».

    More audiobooks from Vladimir Nabokov

    Related to Transparent Things

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Pre-order* Your Copy Today At

      Mar 9, 2021

      Pre-order* Your Copy Today At
      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Charles Baudelaire

      Jun 9, 2020

      After my friend and I left the tobacco shop, he carefully sorted his loose change; slipped some small gold coins in his left jacket pocket; into the right went the silver pieces; in his left pants pocket, a handful of centimes; and in the right, a si

      2 min read

    • Article

      The True Crime Story That (Might Have) Inspired Nabokov to Write ‘Lolita’

      May 16, 2019

      What if the young girl from Camden was the model for the nymphet from Ramsdale? Who was Sally Horner? Who is Dolores Haze? The post The True Crime Story That (Might Have) Inspired Nabokov to Write ‘Lolita’ appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Following a Thread

      Sep 19, 2019

      Following a Thread
      6 min read

    • Article

      John Ashbery

      Mar 15, 2019

      He could understand the things at home.—Wallace Stevens, “Things of August” Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desireof many dwindles to usand our “activities,” wholesomeor otherwise. Soon it becomes apparentthat neither they nor I have any prise o

      4 min read

    • Article

      My Interiors Life: Weaned On The Small Screen

      Nov 25, 2021

      FOR ME, IT WAS ALL DOWN TO what I saw on the box (which was a lot) — and this extended too to the arenas of action: a fantastic littering of such beautiful and extraordinary interiors, not one of which had I ever set foot in, nor even so much as glim

      9 min read

    • Article

      Around The World In 100 Plants

      Oct 26, 2022

      Simon Barnes (Simon & Schuster, £30) WE have become used, in recent years, to the convention of 100 short essays as a means of raising the reader’s eyebrows and setting away a never-ending series of big ideas from the starting point of an everyday o

      5 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s profanisaurus

      Oct 13, 2022

      Roger’s profanisaurus
      9 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      May 1, 2020

      We came here to fondle the glassoctopi. Rosy crystal dragons, psychedelic phalluses in jewelry cases. Eyeglasses, butterflies.Black market rocker leather; Do ItIn Muscle Beach tees. The indecisive sea.We ate a slice of boardwalkpizza topped with anch

      1 min read

    • Article

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 19, 2020

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Staff Picks: Detritus, Dreamin’, Dinos

      Jul 14, 2017

      From Paleoart.   First published in 1966, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, by Justin Kaplan, is still the standard biography of our most enduringly funny writer—or, at least, the earliest writer who makes me actually laugh. I avoided it till now because I

      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      To Make Art Is To Be Human

      Oct 13, 2021

      IN 1950, Ernst Gombrich published The Story of Art. The book was an instant bestseller and was the first to show that there was, indeed, such a thing as a story of art, that artists and movements existed not in isolated moments of time, but as part o

      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken

      Feb 4, 2019

      What she wanted was a kind of greatness that women were not allowed. The post ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      May 18, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Call Of The Garden

      Oct 4, 2023

      The Call Of The Garden
      5 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 17, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Sound Of Music

      Apr 3, 2020

      The Sound Of Music
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Devil Strides Our Countryside

      Jan 26, 2023

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Jeremy Harte Reaktion Books 2022 Hb, 296pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781789146509 One of the most beloved of Doctor Who stories has long been 1971’s “The Daemons”. Over the cou

      15 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Transparent Things

    3.5/5

    171 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Christopher Lane, the reader, is brilliant and brings Nabokov's wonderful prose (his heart tear-shaped and rather small for such a big man') to life in this strangely gripping story with its metaphysical highlights and tangents.
    • 5/5
      The extremely simple story of Hugh Person and his lover Armande is told with this wonderful, delicious examination of little snippets of life. From the 'ask me what I can do' ambitions of a humdrum life to the description of Swiss hot chocolate to its description of second-rate Swiss hotels- there is a savoring in the ordinary that shines through these pages. I read chapter-1 multiple times to make peace with 'transparent things', but it will still need more re-reads.After note: some of Nabokov's descriptions of human digestion are the most 'beautiful' yet biologically accurate I've read in literature.
    • 2/5
      lost me a little, there, nabokov..
    • 4/5
      The dull rainbow of a fog-dogged moon
      ..."he grunted and sighed in his sleep, dreaming of large unwieldy blocks of blackness"...
      I suppose it goes without saying that Nabokov's prose is brilliantly inventive, full of vivid turns of phrase and dark humour, but how does the book stack up as a whole? Well, Transparent Things is a novella about the life and memories of a seemingly average man. Hugh Person is his name, and this is the snapshot story of his stand-out moments which (as the short chapters reveal) are both strange and familiar, humdrum and disastrous.
      Transparent Things is a subtle book: the way Nabokov shows Hugh Person is surreal and sublime, yet also mundane and melancholic. All in all Transparent Things is an elegant work - a masterclass in the art of long short-story writing: understated, wistful, perceptive, deft, elusive and engaging -: definitely worth reading for the imaginative writing.
    • 4/5
      The hero of "Transparent Things" is an editor for a publishing company. He travels to a town in Switzerland to meet with an author, and there becomes involved with a woman who becomes his wife. It is a very short, seemingly simple, story (104 pages), yet Nabokov manages to reveal layer upon layer of complexity in the telling of Hugh Person's love/life story. I know a book has something special when I begin reading again from the first page a second after finishing the last. Nabokov caught me off guard here. I usually am irritated by his erudite, yet disdainful playing with the reader. Maybe I am just getting used to his style...?
    • 2/5
      summer-2013, fraudio, published-1972, satire, switzerlandRead on August 13, 2013Transparent ThingsFraudio> rosado> Read by Christopher Lane.pub 1972summer 2013tbr busting 2013short story (105 pages)> murder and madnesstongue in cheeksleazy> paedophillic undertones againfrom wiki: This short novel tells the story of Hugh Person, a young American editor, and the memory of his four trips to a small village in Switzerland over the course of nearly two decades.Hugh Person is a Who? person, another dislikeable character that flooded in from the Nabokovian nib. Fantastic use of language showpieced in put-downs and acrid observations.5* Pale Fire4* Sebastian Knight3* Lolita3* The Eye2* Transparent Things4 likes
    • 4/5
      When Nabokov plays with words, the rest of us benefit for it. Short, but thick. Go through it multiple times, to (1) savor Nabokov's masterly use of language and (2) find out what on earth is going on here.
    • 4/5
      While with some authors one might get away with less than full attention, with Nabokov it's almost like a prerequisite for the reader to have a single-minded concentration, lest you miss his train of thought or his unique way of expression. Almost always it's like intellectual exercise. This book's title, "Transparent Things", does mean just that at first, as the author focuses on the history of some random "objects" in the story, but Nabokov doesn't stop there: his protagonist and those around him become "transparent" too - no less would be expected of him. The book starts on a rather lugubrious note, and with some dark sarcasm the author does lighten it up in the middle, but all in all, it's a life of agony on display. This one was a bit too heavy for me.
    • 4/5
      It is one of the last novels written by Nabokov. The novel is the antithesis of the title- nothing is transparent, self explanatory, clear or simple. The motivation guiding people is equally mysterious to an individual as it is to others judging his behaviour. The mystery of being or not being is profoundly locked and closed to our understanding.The plot is relatively simple. We accompany Hugh Person, an editor of an American publishing house, during his four consecutive visits to Switzerland. The style is typical for Nabokov, and typical to many modern East European writers: philosophising, aphoristic, poetic and at the same time self mocking and ironic. Since I am reading Milan Kundera at the same time, I see an uncanny similarity between the two in both style and narration technique. Another writer that comes immediately to mind with a very similar technique is Stanislaw Lem.
    • 5/5
      For me, this slender volume is notable much more for its virtuoso display of Nabokov's magnificent literary style than for its particular story. From the back-cover description by Martin Amis, "Transparent Things revolves around four visits of the hero - sullen gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland . . . [who later] makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past... [through] several strands of dream, memory and time."The overall story floats in and out, in non-linear sequence, in imagination and in reality, and in the past, present and future, including even the afterlife. In fact, being Nabokov's next to last novel, it briefly collects and develops ideas of the afterlife that have flitted through previous novels, and have been of interest to him ever since the simple religious beliefs of his mother that he described in Speak Memory.A chapter from the hereafter(!) describes how the effects of an unknowable and unprovable afterlife might nevertheless surround us, completely unnoticed, during our entire lives and how they just might influence events in the here and now, even though certainly never determining the course or outcome of any event.It is an intriguing philosophical speculation that Nabokov puts to the reader. But, more to the point, we finally see (but only after rereading and rethinking, of course!) how cleanly he has woven the speculation into his story and how, indeed, it finally does affect the outcome. It is as transparent as clear glass that one can finally see only by looking at it.