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Vladimir Nabokov
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Pale Fire Paperback – 14 June 2001

by Vladimir Nabokov (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 1,441
Edition: 1st
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Nabokov's suspenseful whodunit and one of his most acclaimed works

The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should.

Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterwork is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.
Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    9780141185262
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0141185262
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Penguin
  5. Publication date
    14 June 2001
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    12.9 x 1.5 x 12.7 cm
  8. Print length
    256 pages
  9. See all details
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Review

This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century -- Mary McCarthy

About the Author

Vladimir Nabokov (Author)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Mary McCarthy (Introducer)
Mary McCarthy was an American literary critic and author of more than two dozen books. Her debut novel, The Company She Keeps, initiated her ascent to become one of the most celebrated writers of her generation, a reputation bolstered by her controversial 1963 New York Times bestseller The Group, which was banned in Australia for its frank portrayal of female sexuality. McCarthy was married four times, including to the critic Edmund Wilson. She died in 1989.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0141185260
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin; 1st edition (14 June 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780141185262
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141185262
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 1.5 x 12.7 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 1,441

About the author

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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokov household was trilingual, and 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. Having 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 ficticvbn ral books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

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Top reviews from Australia

Matthew
5.0 out of 5 stars Pale fire
Reviewed in Australia on 30 May 2015
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A true masterpiece of literature. Nabokov weaves the intellect and imagination together so gracefully that one is helpless in its awe.
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Briony Whitworth
4.0 out of 5 stars an example of why we still need old fashioned books
Reviewed in Australia on 23 October 2015
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fantastic book - darkly funny - but really hard to read in an electronic format having to flip constantly between the poem and footnotes. an argument for old fashioned books.
2 people found this helpful
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Alina S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Book
Reviewed in Germany on 16 August 2023
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A masterful example of unreliable narrator, packaged as a (fake) literary commentary. The disgust I felt for the narcissistic narrator was the best sign of how effective it is.
I think the author of House of Leaves took some inspiration from this book. I personally adore such puzzle-like books; if you prefer a starightforward narration, this one might not be for you.
One person found this helpful
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freego
5.0 out of 5 stars An incredible Russian doll of a novel
Reviewed in Italy on 6 August 2023
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Nabokov continuously surprises the reader and defies expectations. Incredibly elaborate and rich novel with an unusual structure.
One person found this helpful
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Martin Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars An Internet Rabbit Hole From 1962
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 October 2020
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Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel, is also the name of an autobiographical poem the book contains, by fictional academic and poet John Shade – a moving and humorous piece, which sets reflections on mortality alongside riffs about such topics as Gillette razor advertising. Following John Shade’s death, Pale Fire, the poem, falls into the hands of Charles Kimbote, the unfortunate poet’s neighbour, who has arrived from an imaginary east European country, called Zembla, to teach at the local university. Kimbote holes up in a motel where he works on an annotated version of Pale Fire. Through a series of bizarre and misguided factual associations, he attempts to show how the poem reflects much of his own life.

I read Pale Fire as a Kindle edition, and I’m not the first to see that the book is similar to a web document. Taking the form of a commentary, there are naturally many links jumping between poem and explanatory notes. Kimbote careers around his own self-centred web of crazy connections. His thought process is reminiscent of one of those internet algorithmic cul-de-sacs that can take personal quirks and prejudices and turn them into a firm belief in a flat Earth or the evils of 5G.

Using an older analogy you could say that Pale Fire is like a hall of mirrors. But we shouldn’t forget that both internet and hall of mirrors can be a source of fun. So it is fitting that Pale Fire has some very funny sections – such as the account of an assassination attempt where an incompetent hit-man has to keep interrupting the business of assassination to deal with severe diarrhoea.

If you want to have fun, and learn a few things about truth and delusion, I highly recommend Pale Fire. It’s beautifully written, whether dealing with the common place or the elevated. It’s also strangely modern, seemingly waiting for the internet to really show its potential.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars this book is as good, but much of the story is in poetic ...
Reviewed in Canada on 22 March 2018
Verified Purchase
It's a while since I read "Lolita" (Delores Haze), this book is as good, but much of the story is in poetic form, and better for it too.
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どどんぱ　ひろ
4.0 out of 5 stars Blade Runner 2049 プロップ！
Reviewed in Japan on 22 March 2021
Verified Purchase
中古で日焼けがありましたが、満足ゆくものでした。
Blade Runner2049でJOIが手にしていたあの本を長く探していましたが、海外でも高額で取引されていました。
まさかAmazon Japanで比較的安価で購入できるとは思わなかったので大変満足しています。
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