Bend Sinister (1947) is the second English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov and the first novel he wrote in America. The action of the novel takes place in a kind of police state ruled by the party of “equalists” (“equalists”). led by dictator Paduk. At the center of the story is the world famous philosopher Adam Krug, a former classmate of Paduk who bullied him as a child. Trying to get public support for his power from the Circle, Paduk arrests all his friends and acquaintances one by one, but the philosopher can only be broken by separating him from his little son David. According to Nabokov, “the story... is not about life and death in a grotesque police state . <...> The main theme... is... the beating of Krug’s loving heart, the torment of intense tenderness that torments him - and it is for the sake of the pages dedicated to David and his father that this book was written, for their sake it is worth reading.”