The Psychedelic Experience : A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Psychedelic Experience : A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
ISBN: 9780141189635
Publication Date: 19 November 2008

'He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language' Anthony Burgess

'Look at the harlequins . . . Play! Invent the world! Invent reality'. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre 'numerical nimbus syndrome'.

The final novel published before Nabokov's death, Look at the Harlequins! playfully blends sly self-parody, recollection, riddles and jokes, in an exuberant unravelling of the mysteries of memory and the act of creation.