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Vladimir Nabokov's opinions on various writers, culled from Strong Opinions.

Borges, Jorge Luis. A favorite. How freely one breathes in his marvelous labyrinths! Lucidity of thought, purity of poetry. A man of infinite talent.

Camus, Albert. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.

Don Quixote. A cruel and crude old book.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously.

The Double. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose."

The Brothers Karamazov. Dislike it intensely.

Crime and Punishment. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole.

García Lorca, Federico. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.

Kafka, Franz.

The Metamorphosis. Second-greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose.

Marx, Karl. Loathe him.

Plato. Not particularly fond of him.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Even more awful than Camus

Nausea. Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing.

Tolstoy, Leo. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. Read complete works between 14 and 15. Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously. A genius.

Wilde, Oscar. Rank moralist and didacticist. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Romantic in the large sense.

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