Written when Nabokov was still in his twenties, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is his earliest works; a beautiful verse drama full of kings, masks, revolution, love, theatre and exile. 

Despite being written in the 1920's, it was only translated and published in English in 2012. It is strange Nabokov before he becomes “Nabokov” in the familiar novelistic sense. But he's already ornate, already formal, already obsessed with disguise, doubling, aesthetic games and the seriousness of which we take invented worlds.

The play takes place in a fantastical kingdom where private passion and public unrest blur into melodrama, comedy and political nightmare. There is courtly intrigue, revolutionary violence, romantic jealousy, theatrical self-consciousness and that very Nabokovian sense that life is always half performance, half trapdoor. A strong one for readers interested in early Nabokov, Russian émigré literature, modernist drama, aristocratic collapse, or the prehistory of the themes that later sharpen in Pale Fire, Invitation to a Beheading and Bend Sinister.

Hardback, Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. First United States edition. With an introduction by Thomas Karshan; translated by Anastasia Tolstoy and Thomas Karshan. Illustrations by Pablo Delcan. Great second-hand condition, with light handling to boards/jacket and minor edge wear.