Terra Incognita

'The woods were gradually thinning. I was tormented by strange hallucinations. I gazed at the weird tree trunks, around some of which were coiled thick, flesh-coloured snakes; suddenly I thought I saw, between the trunks, as though through my fingers, the mirror of a half-open wardrobe'. These three stories of menace, magic and melancholy display Vladimir Nabokov's astonishing range and inventiveness. Whether describing an escape across a surreal tropical landscape, a fateful meeting or an unexpected - and threatening - return, each tale shows his dazzling sleight of hand, intellectual playfulness and fantastical imagination. This book includes "Terra Incognita", "Spring in Fialta" and "The Doorbell".

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was born in St Petersburg. Living in Berlin and then Paris between 1923 and 1940 he published novels, short stories, plays, poems and translations in the Russian language and established himself as one of the most outstanding Russian emigre writers. In 1940 he moved with his wife and son to America where he rose to international prominence as a masterly prose stylist for the novels he composed in English, most famously, Lolita. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland where he died in 1977.