The wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder. - "A beautiful mystery plot, not to be revealed." - Newsweek
"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically."...
'A work of rapture - jolting, hilarious and incredibly racy' Martin Amis, The Times
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after its original publication-- Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.