Laughter in the Dark (2 Rev ed)

This is the way Vladimir Nabokow's Laughter In The Dark begins: 'Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, aman called Albinus.

He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.' And he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and cleverly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction.