Glory

Glory (1972) by Vladimir Nabokov (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), ISBN: 0297994166
Condition: Good (as sold by Crappy Old Books)

Welcome to Glory, Nabokov’s sly little novel about the most dangerous activity known to man: being young and romantic in your own head. If you’ve ever looked at your life and thought, “This needs more destiny,” then congratulations — you already understand the problem that drives this book, and also half the human race.

Our hero is Martin Edelweiss, which is a name that sounds like it should come with a family crest and a faint smell of Alpine air. He grows up in the long shadow of exile and memory, drifting through the kind of Europe where people carry entire countries behind their eyes. Martin is tender, dreamy, and quietly ridiculous in the way that earnest people sometimes are — not because they’re foolish, but because they insist on treating their feelings like a serious architectural project. He falls in love (of course), he studies, he wanders, he broods. He tries to be brave in the way that young men try to be brave: by inventing a version of themselves that looks better from a distance.

And because this is Nabokov, the prose is doing somersaults while the plot pretends it’s simply strolling. Every paragraph has that signature polish — sentences that feel hand-crafted, slightly amused, and sharper than they appear. Nabokov doesn’t just describe a scene; he sets it under glass and lets it catch the light. The wit is dry. The beauty is almost unfair. The emotional undercurrent is surprisingly sincere, which is part of the joke: you think you’re reading an elegant comedy of manners and then the book quietly leans in and asks what you’d risk for meaning.

Glory is also a novel about “glory” as a concept — that shimmering, impossible thing people chase when ordinary life feels too small. Sometimes glory is a public triumph. Sometimes it’s an private act no one applauds. Sometimes it’s a choice made for reasons you can’t quite explain, except that your heart insists it must be done. Nabokov treats this with an arched eyebrow and a soft spot you don’t expect. He’s mocking the romance of heroic gestures even as he understands why they’re so tempting.

And yes: the ending. The ending does that Nabokov thing where it doesn’t bang a drum so much as close a door very softly and leave you standing there, staring at your own reflection, wondering what exactly just happened to you.

Condition: Good, which is exactly right for a book about longing, bravado, and youthful illusions: a little worn at the edges, handled by previous hands, possibly harbouring the faint ghost of somebody’s grand intentions. Sold by Crappy Old Books, naturally — because if you’re going to buy exquisite literature about the romance of risk, it should probably come from a place with a name that suggests it’s also hiding a box of damp postcards and a slightly cursed atlas.

Ideal for readers who like their novels beautifully written, quietly funny, and oddly moving, with a hero who may or may not be brave, but is definitely committed to the idea of being unforgettable — even if only to himself.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Vladimir Nabokov