塞巴斯蒂安·奈特的真实生活 (1941)

《塞巴斯蒂安·奈特的现实生活》（The Real Life of Sebastian Knight）是弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫的第一部英文小说，1938年底至1939年初在巴黎写作，1941年首次出版。该作品被确定为后现代主义小说的先驱。

新的开始

纳博科夫的第一部英文的主要作品是在巴黎匆忙写成的，作者坐在浴室里，手提箱当作写字台使用。在此之前，他已出版了九部俄文小说，使用笔名 V. 西林，关注流亡生活和适应的问题。这是纳博科夫的第一本以自己名字署名的小说，由纽约新方向出版社出版于1941年，销售很慢。在《洛丽塔》取得成功之后，该书于1959年重新出版，这次获得了广泛的好评。

情节

叙述者 V.创作他的第一部文学作品，是他的同母异父兄弟，俄罗斯出生的英国小说家塞巴斯蒂安·奈特（1899-1936年）的传记。在探索过程中，他追踪塞巴斯蒂安在剑桥的同学，并采访了其他朋友和熟人。在他的工作过程中，V.还调查了塞巴斯蒂安的书（见下文），并试图驳斥误导《塞巴斯蒂安·奈特的悲剧》的观点，这是奈特的前秘书古德曼先生写的传记，他坚持认为奈特太冷漠，从现实生活被切断了。

V. 总结道，塞巴斯蒂安在与克莱尔·毕晓普长期恋爱后，

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939 in Paris and first published in 1941. A work centred on language and its inability to convey any satisfactory definition, it has been identified as a forerunner of the postmodernist novel.

A new start

Nabokov's first major work in English was written hastily in Paris while the author sat in the bathroom, his valise set across a bidet as a writing desk. It had been preceded by nine earlier novels in Russian, written under the pen name V. Sirin, and shares with them a preoccupation with the problems of living in exile and of adaptation. This, Nabokov's first novel under his own name, was published by New Directions Publishers in the US and by Editions Poetry London in the UK, in 1941 and 1945 respectively, selling slowly. After the success of Lolita it was republished in 1959, this time to wide critical acclaim.

Plot summary

The narrator, V., is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography of his half-brother, the Russian-born English novelist Sebastian Knight (1899–1936). In the course of his quest he tracks down Sebastian's contemporaries at Cambridge and interviews other friends and acquaintances. In the course of his work V. also surveys Sebastian's books (see below) and attempts to refute the views of the "misleading" The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, a biography by Knight's former secretary Mr. Goodman, who maintains that Knight was too aloof and cut off from real life.

V. concludes that, after a long-running romantic relationship with Clare Bishop, Sebastian's final years were embittered by a love affair with another woman — a Russian whom he presumably met at a hotel in Blauberg, where Sebastian spent time recuperating from a heart ailment in June 1929. V. leaves for Blauberg, where, with the help of a private detective, he acquires a list of the names of four women who were staying at the hotel at the same time as Sebastian and tracks down each to interview them. After dismissing the possibility of Helene Grinstein in Berlin, his search leads him to Paris and the list narrows to two candidates: Mme de Rechnoy and Mme von Graun.

V. first suspects Mme de Rechnoy of being the mystery woman, based on a compelling description from her ex-husband, Pahl Palich Rechnoy. Mme de Rechnoy has left her husband and cannot be located, leaving V. unsatisfied. However, after meeting Mme von Graun's friend, Mme Nina Lecerf, and hearing stories of von Graun's unflattering affair with a Russian, V. becomes convinced that Helene von Graun is the woman in question. Nina invites V. to visit her in the country, where Helene von Graun will be staying with her. Finding that Helene has not yet arrived, V. mentions to Nina a letter introducing himself to Mme von Graun, which angers her. By chance, V. learns that it is Nina Lecerf herself, and not Helene, who was Sebastian's final romance. Nina was, in fact, the Mme de Rechnoy whom V. had originally suspected but never met.