num_pages: 292
description: Amidst a Weimar-era milieu of silent film stars, artists, and aspirants, Nabokov creates a merciless masterpiece as Albinus, an aging critic, falls prey to his own desires, to his teenage mistress, and to Axel Rex, the scheming rival for her affections who finds his greatest joy in the downfall of others ."Both hilarious and deliciously cruel." - The GuardianAlbinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his Margot, who wants to become a movie star herself. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
language: English
title: Laughter in the Dark
titlecomplete: Laughter in the Dark
characters: Margot Peters, Albert Albinus, Elisabeth Albinus, Axel Rex
genres: Fiction, Literature, Classics, Novels, Germany, Russian Literature, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Russia, Modern Classics
ratings_count: 17332
places: Berlin
publisher: Vintage