But arguments of categorisation apart, it has many of the features of his short stories and it is a work in which he made several leaps forward in his manipulation of narrative conventions at the same time as combining a number of his favourite themes.
In fact Nabokov himself called it a ‘little novel’ – and he may well be right. And it is perhaps significant that in his next story, ‘The Eye’ (February 1930) he expanded the possibilities of the short story form to a point just short of it becoming a novella. There was a gap in Nabokov’s production of short stories during the years 1927-1930 occasioned by his growing success as a novelist: he published both King, Queen, Knave and The Defense during this period. Part II – The European Master: Stories 1930 – 1939
A critical examination of Nabokov’s collected stories
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