A new “novel” by Vladimir Nabokov comes out this fall.

Well, novel is a generous term. The book by the author of “Lolita” is actually more of a collection of index cards.

Nabokov wrote on index cards. Before he died in 1977, he asked his wife to burn his unfinished book on 138 cards. Not only did she not burn them, they were kept safely in a Swiss vault for 30 years.

In November, Knopf publishes “The Original of Laura,” index cards, notes and all. Publishers Weekly’s early review describes it:

    What form the book may have eventually taken is, of course, a mystery, but the story appears to be about a woman named Flora (spelled, once, as “FLaura”), the daughter of an artist couple—he a photographer who appears briefly before killing himself, she a ballet dancer—who, at some point, is the subject of a scandalous novel, Laura, written by a former lover. Flora’s beginnings are Lolita-like; it is she who has the encounter with Hubert and, years later, marries an older neurologist named Philip Wild to whom she is marginally faithful. The portions of the draft taken from “Wild’s notes” contain some spectacular prose: “I saw you again, Aurora Lee…. Your painted pout and cold gaze were, come to think of it, very like the official lips and eyes of Flora, my wayward wife, and your flimsy frock of black silk might have come from her recent wardrobe.”

Mostly, this amounts to a peek inside the author’s process and mindset as he neared death. Indeed, mortality, suicide, impotence, a disgust with the male human body—and an appreciation of the fit, young female body—figure prominently.

Publishers Weekly rightly asks whether “the Lolita author is laughing or turning over in his grave.”