Invitation to a Beheading: Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Nabokov, Vladimir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141185600 ISBN 13: 9780141185606

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2001

Synopsis

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'.

About this title

Review:

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

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

About the Author:

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0141185600
• ISBN 13: 9780141185606
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192