The Original of Laura

There are forty sentences alone that make this volume worth having.

Ian McEwan

This edition is a triumph of the book maker's art... The Original of Laura is magic right through, from the dust jacket, in sideways-fading white on black with just the merest flicks of gules, past the cloth cover that reproduces the last words of Nabokov the novelist, to the heavy gray pages divided between, on the top half, photographic reproductions of the 138 file cards, front and back, and, on the bottom half, the text in print, including misspellings, slips of the pen, blank spaces, all... the book is deeply interesting.

John Banville, Bookforum

It's like seeing an unfinished Michelangelo sculpture-one of those rough, half-formed giants straining to step out of its marble block. It's even more powerful, to a different part of the brain, than the polish of a David or a Lolita.

New York magazine

..."Laura" will beckon and beguile Nabokov fans, who will find many of the author's perennial themes and obsessions percolating.

The New York Times

...this tantalizing, fascinating, occasionally perplexing manuscript. Pity he didn't get to finish it. Fortunate we get to see it at all.

The Christian Science Monitor

What literary news could be more thrilling?

Robert McCrum, The Observer

There are enough Nabokovian touches...to tantalize any devotee of the English language.

James Marcus, The Los Angeles Times