{"product_id":"invitation-to-a-beheading-paperback","title":"Invitation to a Beheading - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eVladimir Nabokov\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike Kafka's \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eInvitation to a Beheading\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFront Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eVLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH NABOKOV was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHaving already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to \u003cb\u003eLolita\u003c\/b\u003e he claimed: \"My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses--the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions--which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.\" [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, \u003cb\u003eBend Sinister\u003c\/b\u003e (1947), \u003cb\u003eLolita\u003c\/b\u003e (1955), \u003cb\u003ePnin\u003c\/b\u003e (1957), and \u003cb\u003ePale Fire\u003c\/b\u003e (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 223\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.7 x 8 x 5.1 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 19, 1989\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52023746822445,"sku":"9780679725312","price":18.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0938\/3185\/6429\/files\/invitation-to-a-beheading-paperback-8672141.webp?v=1777431066","url":"https:\/\/ishookbooks.com\/products\/invitation-to-a-beheading-paperback","provider":"iShook Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}