Book 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…
Why read it?
1 author picked Invitation to a Beheading as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Invitation to a Beheading is almost indescribable. It is Kafka-like in its dizzying circuitry.
The narrative teases and denies and misguides us readers exactly as it teases, denies, misguides the main character, poor Cincinnatus. Nabokov cajoles and navigates a tale that pinballs between outrageous absurdity, exquisitely excruciating stasis, and incremental revelation. And Nabokov’s command of nuanced language is superhuman.
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