thumb|First edition

Carrousel is a booklet published in 1987 containing three short texts written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1923 for "Karussel", a Russian cabaret.

Content

The three texts are:

  • "Laughter and Dreams" (by Vladimir V. Nabokoff), a short and impressionistic essay on the arts, toys, and the cabaret.
  • "Painted Wood" (by V. Cantaboff), an essay in the same vein on wooden toys and the cabaret.
  • "The Russian Song" (by Vladimir Sirine), a short and nostalgic poem.

"Cantaboff" of course <!-- Of course" reinserted in order not to insult the reader by suggesting he/she wouldn't already know. --> refers to "Cantab." and the author's recent graduation from Trinity College, Cambridge; "Sirine" was Nabokov's occasional French spelling for "Sirin", his early Russian pseudonym.

Brian Boyd regards the poem as "banal", the prose as "masterly".

Publication

thumb|left|100 px|Some books by Nabokov, including the first edition of Carrousel (the one nominally limited to 100 copies)

The only known previous appearance of these three texts had been within the second issue of a trilingual (German, French, English) brochure, Karussel – Carousal – Carrousel, published in Berlin in 1923 as the prospectus for "Karussel", a Russian theatre travelling to Berlin.

Stella de Does-Kohnhorst discovered a copy of this rare prospectus, gave it to the Nabokov family, and asked for and obtained their permission to publish the contributions by Nabokov.