Luzhin protection

"Luzhin Protection" (1929) is the top achievement of Vladimir Nabokov of the 20s, his first great creative luck, which brought him the glory of the best young writer of Russian emigration. Having shown, according to Gleb Struve, the “witchcraft possession of the theme and material ", Nabokov discovered a new bright page in Russian literature. The brilliant chess player Alexander Luzhin, who lives more likely in the world of his abstract and strict art than in real Berlin, discovers what can be called the combinatorial principle of being. Unsuccessfully trying to solve the "moves of fate" and interrupt their sinister repetition, he ceases to understand where the game ends and life itself begins, against the inexorable circumstances of which he is defenseless