Invitation to a beheading
(1989, original release: 1959)
Fiction
Book
Call Numbers:
FICTION/NABOKOV,V
0 Holds on 1 Copy
Availability
Details
PUBLISHED
New York : Vintage Books, 1989
©1959
©1959
EDITION
First Vintage international edition
DESCRIPTION
223 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN/ISSN
0679725318, 9780679725312, 0679725318 :
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES
Translation of: Priglashenie na kaznʹ
"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" -- p. [4] of cover