Nabokov Drama Gets US Debut after 89 Years

WASHINGTON, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – One of renowned Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest literary works - and his first major play - will be heard in the United States for the first time Monday evening, a mere 89 years after he wrote it, according to the website of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.

The play, “The Tragedy of Mister Morn,” was written by Nabokov in the winter of 1923-1924 while the future “Lolita” author was living in exile in Central Europe.

Written in blank verse, it was his first full, five act play, an ambitious work in which Nabokov “unmistakably aims at Shakespeare” according to the book “Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years,” written by Brian Boyd, an expert on the famed Russian author.

“The Tragedy of Mister Morn” is an allegorical tale about a disguised king whose love affair sparks a revolution, according to Boyd. Never published during Nabokov’s lifetime, it was published in English last year in a translation by Anastasia Tolstoy, adirect descendant of Russian literary great Leo Tolstoy and the British scholar Thomas Karshan, according to the Times Literary Supplement.