Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139944 in Books
• Published on: 1989-09-19
• Released on: 1989-09-19
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.03" h x .65" w x 5.16" l, .50 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

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

Ingram
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.

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