Hermann Hermann - part-time poet, part-time ogre - sees a way out of his mounting monetary and marital difficulties when, by chance, he meets his Doppelganger on a sojourn in Switzerland. This is the premise of Despair, by Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin, £6.99 in UK), a short and fabulistic story of an ego run amok, blinded to its own weaknesses and capsizing into the despair that fate provides for such narcissists. I particularly like this novel because of the flashy linguistic antics of Herr Hermann - who narrates his own story - and how they convey his self-consumed nature and also his soullessness; qualities which perfectly foreshadow his plans for his unfortunate double.