Who Is Playing Whom?

Dear fellow readers,

Our next meeting is dedicated to Vladimir Nabokov’s King, Queen, Knave — an ironic novel of adultery, desire, and manipulation.
***
A young provincial arrives in Berlin and enters the glittering world of his wealthy uncle and elegant aunt. Desire, vanity, and calculation gradually draw the three of them into a game whose rules none of them fully understands.
***
Written in Russian in 1928, King, Queen, Knave was Nabokov’s second novel. Nabokov himself acknowledged its playful echoes of Madame Bovary, but the novel also invites comparison with Thérèse Raquin: another adulterous triangle shaped by confinement, appetite, and conflicting fantasies of freedom.
***
This is the fourth meeting in our Adultery series, in which we explore how writers from different countries and time periods use adultery to examine broader themes.
***
The full adultery series agenda can be found here:
Just Another Book Club