Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a Beheading.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959. First US edition. Translation by Dimitri Nabokov of "Priglashenie na kazn'" (Paris: Dom Knigi, 1938). 223 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 8.75", is bound in half red cloth and gray and white decorative paper-covered boards, with top edge of text block tinted red. Book shows light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Previous owner's bookplate is affixed to front flyleaf. Interior is otherwise clean and without markings. Dust jacket, with price of $3.95 in lower right corner of front flap, displays light soiling, with small stains at edges and spine. Loss of material can be seen at bottom edge of front panel and minor loss at top edge of spine panel. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"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."