This is typical brilliant Nabokov, with plenty of detail and mysterious threads laid down throughout that the imaginative can choose to follow or ignore. Because it was written in English rather than translated, Nabokov's prose is at its most powerful and organic - by far. The stories in this are extremely haunting, musing on the nature of life after death, among many other themes. It is true genius and you can read it in a single sitting. Get it. You won't be disappointed.
"An inspector calls", the title play in this collection, was written inside a week in 1944. Inspector Goole, investigating a girl's death, calls on the Birlings, an outwardly virtuous household.
When James Lessiter returns to Lenton after many years to claim his family estate, his reappearance opens old wounds never healed. Then he is found bludgeoned to death by a fire poker and the suspects are too numerous to count. Thank heavens Miss Silver is in town to visit a friend.
The creator of fantastic universes of vampires and witches takes us now into the world of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the destruction of Solomon's Temple, to tell the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones. He is ghost, genii, demon, angel--pure spirit made visible. He pours his heart out to us as he journeys from an ancient Babylon of royal plottings and religious upheavals to Europe of the Black Death and on to the modern world. There he finds himself, amidst the towers of Manhattan, in confrontation with his own human origins and the dark forces that have sought to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction.
This text is intended for students and readers of classical and other literature. Topics include: Greek hexameter poetry; rhetoric; Greek literature under the Romans; Latin literature before 70 BC; poetry c.40 BC to the death of Tiberius; and Latin literature after c.150.
J.B. Priestley: An Inspector Calls
