Invitation to a Beheading
Title | Invitation to a Beheading PDF eBook |
Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 240 |
Release | 1989-09-19 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0679725318 |
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.
Invitation to a Beheading
Title | Invitation to a Beheading PDF eBook |
Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
Publisher | Penguin UK |
Pages | 192 |
Release | 2012-03-01 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0141913800 |
Written in Berlin in 1934, Invitation to a Beheading contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as ‘a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ... The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ... But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair’.
Invitation to a Beheading
Title | Invitation to a Beheading PDF eBook |
Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 240 |
Release | 2011-02-16 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0307787354 |
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.
Invitation to a Beheading
Title | Invitation to a Beheading PDF eBook |
Author | Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov |
Publisher | Putnam Publishing Group |
Pages | 236 |
Release | 1959 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN |
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.
Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading
Title | Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading PDF eBook |
Author | Julian W. Connolly |
Publisher | Northwestern University Press |
Pages | 212 |
Release | 1997 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780810112711 |
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.
Bend Sinister
Title | Bend Sinister PDF eBook |
Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 273 |
Release | 1990-04-14 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0679727272 |
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.
Think, Write, Speak
Title | Think, Write, Speak PDF eBook |
Author | Vladimir Nabokov Literary Trust |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 578 |
Release | 2021-02-09 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 1101873701 |
A rich compilation of the previously uncollected Russian and English prose and interviews of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, edited by Nabokov experts Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy. “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child": so Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote in the introduction to his volume of selected prose, Strong Opinions. Think, Write, Speak follows up where that volume left off, with a rich compilation of his uncollected prose and interviews, from a 1921 essay about Cambridge to two final interviews in 1977. The chronological order allows us to watch the Cambridge student and the fledgling Berlin reviewer and poet turn into the acclaimed Paris émigré novelist whose stature brought him to teach in America, where his international success exploded with Lolita and propelled him back to Europe. Whether his subject is Proust or Pushkin, the sport of boxing or the privileges of democracy, Nabokov’s supreme individuality, his keen wit, and his alertness to the details of life illuminate the page.