Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov (English) Paperback Book

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In an unnamed dream country, Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. After spending his last days in jail, he simply wills his executioners out of existence.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world.In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude," an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed, he simply wills his executioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.

Author Biography

VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH NABOKOV was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins.The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri. Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses--the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions--which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

Review

"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike

Review Quote

"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike

Details ISBN0679725318 Author Vladimir Nabokov Short Title INVITATION TO A BEHEADING Language English Translator Dmitri Nabokov ISBN-10 0679725318 ISBN-13 9780679725312 Media Book Format Paperback Year 1989 Residence St. Petersburg, RUR Birth 1899 Death 1977 DOI 10.1604/9780679725312 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 1989-09-19 NZ Release Date 1989-09-19 US Release Date 1989-09-19 UK Release Date 1989-09-19 Pages 240 Publisher Random House USA Inc Series Vintage International Publication Date 1989-09-19 Imprint Random House Inc DEWEY 891.7342 Audience General We've got this

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