num_pages: 275
description: 'Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest', Nabokov wrote of King, Queen, Knave. Comic, sensual and cerebral, it dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespectacled nephew Franz. 'If a resolute Freudian manages to slip in' - Nabokov darts a glance to the reader - 'he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set up here and there'.
language: English
title: King, Queen, Knave
titlecomplete: King, Queen, Knave
genres: 20th Century, Germany, American, Russia, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Russian Literature, Classics, Fiction
ratings_count: 5299
publisher: Penguin Books