Best Novelist in the History of Literature?

[llion]

Bend Sinister is another Nabokov corker. Think he could lay claim to the best autobiography as well: Speak, Memory. The concision of the title alone hints at how brilliant it is.
The thing I like most about his writing is how it manages to be as poetic and experimental/risky while still telling a rattling good story.

 

[phildwyer]

Devils is great but number 2 in my Dostoevski list would be Crime and Punishment. Good old Raskolnikov.

C and P would be third for me. Devils is so brilliantly perspicacious, politically speaking--prophetic one might almost say. I agree with you about The Idiot though. Nabokov´s Pale Fire would probably come in fourth in the all-time great list...