By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Razor’ by Vladimir Nabokov is a short tale – a short, sharp one, we might say. First published in the Russian emigré newspaper Rul’ in Berlin in 1926, the story is set in Berlin and features a title character who works in a barbershop. This man, a Russian, is working in the shop on his own one day when an evil figure from his past walks in for a shave.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Signs and Symbols’ is a short story by the Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), originally published in the New Yorker in 1948. The story centres on an elderly married Russian couple who are immigrants to the United States; their son is suffering from paranoid delusions and has been confined to a sanatorium. ‘Signs and Symbols’ focuses on their thwarted attempt to visit their son and its aftermath.