I'm not sure what all the hype is about. I've been meaning to read Nabokov for a while, but you gotta start with Lolita right? Well, to be honest, I just couldn't bring myself to read it. I'm not for censorship however I am for personal choice and I find the subject matter pretty distasteful and honestly just didn't want to spend my reading time with it. Still, you have to read Nabokov right? Well Despair was my compromise. I was pretty disappointed. I'd been hearing what a brilliant writer he was for years. I just don't see it. He's good. The book was well written, but I wouldn't say there was anything special about it. Not only that the main character was extremally unlikable. Not in that delicious character who you love to hate sort of way. Just character who you wish would go away sort of way. I'm glad I finally had a go at Nabokov, but I think this will by my last book of his. ( )

Desesperación es una impagable joya literaria, una originalísima variación sobre el tema del doble en la que la inveterada astucia narrativa de su autor se combina con su diabólico sentido del humor. La historia empieza el día en que un fabricante de chocolate tropieza con un vagabundo que le parece su sosias. Cuando, más adelante, su negocio comience a hundirse, decidirá llevar a cabo un crimen perfecto que le permitirá cobrar su propio seguro de vida y vivir feliz para siempre jamás.

Despair is the story of Hermann Karlovich, a man stuck in a lousy job and even lousier marriage, looking for a way out. Like many a modern day man, loneliness pervades Hermann's existence: all his relationships are superficial at best and involve money. He comes across a vagabond who looks like him and is struck by an idea -- how about killing the lookalike and switching places with him?

Of course, things don't go quite according to plan.

Few authors yield the power of the word better than Nabokov and readers looking for something truly well put together will not be disappointed. While not a breezy read, Despair is a short book and I recommend for anyone looking for sincere contemplation. ( )

This is Nabokov's Dostoevskian novel, albeit only in the choice of topic -- his language and style is completely unDostoevsky-like. This is not surprising given Nabokov's disdain for Dostoevsky as a writer. The narrator makes jabs at "Dusty" often, refers to "The Double" and "Crime and Punishment" openly and with a kind of sneer.

In brief, the narrator has met his double in the person of a vagabond, starts a relationship with this person, then plans a nefarious crime, it seems, for the sake of writing about it. Because this narrator is, like Nabokov, a well-educated, elegant, Russian emigre and not the harassed petty clerk of Dostoevsky's tale, he is very concerned with the mechanics of writing the story. The first chapters often bring up literary problems, like which events should he speak of first, details of place, how things should be introduced and he comes back to the issue of writing, especially at the end. Leave it to Nabokov to tell Dostoevsky how to write.

It is an interesting piece -- Nabokov's first novel, reworked 30 or so years later --with a wonderful, but not unexpected, little twist near the end. Nevertheless, what's missing from "Despair" is the essence of a Dostoevsky novel: the angst and frisson, inelegant, hysterical and so compelling. ( )

The last paragraph would add half a star to my rating. ( )