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Also by Vladimir Nabokov:

The Original Of Laura, November 2009
Hardcover
Lolita, March 1999
Trade Size (reprint)
Speak. Memory, September 1989
Trade Size (reprint)
Invitation to a Beheading, September 1989
Paperback
Pnin, June 1989
Trade Size (reprint)
Pale Fire, April 1989
Trade Size (reprint)

INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
By: Vladimir Nabokov

Vintage
September 1989
On Sale: September 19, 1989
240 pages
ISBN: 0679725318
EAN: 9780679725312
Paperback
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Fiction

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.

Media Buzz

All Things Considered - March 12, 2012