Friday, May 16, 2014

Six notable posthumous works of fiction

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Joel Cunningham tagged six top works of fiction that were completed and published after their authors died, including:
The Original of Laura, by Vladimir Nabokov

Before his death in 1977, Nabokov, ever the perfectionist, requested his family destroy the drafts of his final, incomplete novel. They declined (and can you blame them? It’s freaking Nabokov!) Nevertheless, the fragments that did exist weren’t published for another 30 years, though the result can barely be called a novel, consisting of a loose plot sketched on 138 index cards. Critics generally agreed that such preliminary material should never have been released.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue