Name: Pale Fire
SKU: 1534751
Price: 23.31 EUR
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
ISBN: 9780679723424

Type

Physical Book

Author

Vladimir Nabokov

Publisher

Vintage

Year

1989

Language

English

Pages

320

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.4x13.5x1.8 cm

Weight

0.24 kg.

ISBN

0679723420

ISBN13

9780679723424

Synopsis "Pale Fire "

A darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue from one of the leading writers of the twentieth century, the acclaimed author of Lolita.

"Half-poem, half-prose...a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. One of the great works of art of this century." —Mary McCarthy, New York Times bestselling author of The Group

An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king. Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, Vladimir Nabokov's witty novel achieves that rarest of things in literature—perfect tragicomic balance.

Vladimir Nabokov

(Author)

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Vladimir Nabokov was born in Saint Petersburg into an aristocratic family in 1899, but his family background first, and later his personal interests, took him to Germany, England, France, and the United States, where he began a brilliant career as a poet, novelist, critic, and translator, while teaching Literature at several prestigious universities. His novels Mary (1926), King, Queen, Knave (1928), The Defense (1930), Glory (1932), Laughter in the Dark (1933), Despair and The Gift (both from 1934), Invitation to a Beheading (1938), The Eye (1937), The Enchanter (1939), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) and Ultima Thule (1942) preceded the monumental success of Lolita (1955) which allowed him to leave teaching and fully dedicate himself to his writing vocation. Later came Pnin (1957), Pale Fire (1962), Ada or Ardor (1969), Transparent Things (1972), Look at the Harlequins! (1974). Among his non-fiction works, his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) and literary essays such as Nikolai Gogol (1944) or his courses on European literature, on Don Quixote or on Russian literature stand out. In 1961, he moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1977. In 2009, his son Dmitri agreed to the publication of his unfinished novel, The Original of Laura.

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