Bend Sinister (novel)

For the album by The Fall, see Bend Sinister (album). For the Canadian musical group, see Bend Sinister (band).

1st edition cover

Bend Sinister is a 1947 dystopian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov.

The title

A "bend sinister" is a heraldic device: a bar drawn from the upper right to the lower left on a coat of arms. In an edition in 1963, Nabokov explains, "This choice of a title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life."

There is a great deal of wordplay in the novel, concerning leftward (or sinister) movements.

Plot summary

This book takes place in a fictitious European nation known as Padukgrad, where a government arises following the rise of a philosophy known as "Ekwilism," which discourages the idea of anyone being different from anyone else, and promotes the state as the prominent good in society. The story begins with the protagonist, Adam Krug, had just lost his wife to an unsuccessful surgery. He is quickly asked to sign and deliver a speech to the leader of the new government by the head of the university and his colleges, but he refuses. This government is led by a man named Paduk and his "Party of the Average Man." As it happens, the world-renowned philosopher Adam Krug was in his youth a classmate of Paduk, at which period he had bullied him and referred to him disparagingly as "the Toad." Paduk arrests many of the people close to Krug and those against his Ekiwilist philosophy, and attempts to get the influential Professor Krug to promote the state philosophy to help stomp out dissent and increase his personal prestige.

He makes a series of offers to Krug, but Krug continues to refuse outright. Finally, Paduk has Krug's young son David taken for ransom as Krug was arrested. Immediately, Krug capitulates and is prepared to promote the Ekiwilist philosophy, and is promised David's safe return. However, when David is to be returned to him, Krug is horrified to find that the child he is presented is not his son. There has been a mix-up, and David has been sent to an orphanage that doubles as a violent prisoner rehabilitation clinic where he was tortured and killed when he was offered as a "release" to the prisoners.

Paduk makes an offer to allow Krug to personally kill those responsible, but he swears at the officials and is locked in a large prison cell. Another offer is made to Krug to free 24 opponents of Ekwilism, including many of his friends, in exchange for doing so. He accepts in complete lucidity, then, as the author feels pity, a beam of light comes down and strikes him insane leading him to charge Paduk.

Characters

• Adam Krug - University philosopher and protagonist
• Olga (presumably) Krug - Adam's dead wife
• David Krug - Adam's son
• Paduk - Dictator of Padukgrad, former school mate of Krug, nicknamed Toad
• Dr. Azureus
• Hustav
• Ember