Invitation to a Beheading
by Vladimir Nabokov
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1424)
Read in January, 2008
recommended to Abby by:
Amandarecommends it for: no one
This was recommended to me by someone I should have known has completely different reading taste than I do. The writing style/prose is good, the sentences are very well crafted and pleasurable to read. The story? Miserable. It's one annoying, miserable whine over and over and over again. The premise of the book is so flimsy. There is no reality in it (it all exists in the protagonist's head), so you can't trust anything he says, rendering the plot pointless. Had the character gone through...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Gen-X-ers, postmoderns
I saw this book as a story about relationships. Cincinnatus is a prisoner for an absurd crime of personality, and his executioner cares for him and dotes on him, completely ignorant of any reason why the spitful Cincinnatus should dislike him. It teaches us about ourselves, and about the blurring of lines in our love relationships.
Sometimes, those who love us most, are the ones that imprison us or act as our executioners. Yet they love us, nonetheless. We think that those who love us will n...more
Sometimes, those who love us most, are the ones that imprison us or act as our executioners. Yet they love us, nonetheless. We think that those who love us will n...more
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Read in May, 2008
I absolutely loved the first part of the book, but it was slower moving. It starts out with a lot of time getting to know the psyche of Cincinnatus and his thoughts really are profound. I still have a hard time believing one man (Nabakov) could be so continually brilliant. But as it gets closer to the end things move a lot quicker and a lot more is taking place in the "real" world. It was much harder to understand and I'd find myself really being baffled at what particular parts ...more
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This was my first Nabokov and I'm told that it's quite different than his other writings; well I'll be the judge of that! This book read like a short story as opposed to a novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it as a strange sometimes first-person (mostly not) narrative about the time spent in prison before an unannounced execution. What's remarkably strange about this one, though, is that I couldn't grasp the time setting at all. Its dialogue is written as older form (think Olde English but...not) an...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
Nabokov fans, or anyone who appreciates language and imagination
Invitation to a Beheading is not like most of Nabokov’s works, but it is delightful and brilliant nonetheless. It follows Cincinnatus C., who is sentenced to death for gnostical turpitude, during his last days in a prison cell. The characters he interacts with are oddly amusing and ridiculous, yet the absurd reality that they hold his fate in their ludicrous hands is both depressing and telling of society in general—it is the ones who know nothing who control everything. Cincinnatus struggle...more
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Read in April, 2008
I started listening to Reading Lolita In Tehran on CD -- how lame is it when you can't even finish a book-on-tape?! -- and in the first chapter (which is as far as I got), she mentions this book. I forget what she says about it, but it intrigued me enough to go on a quest to find a copy -- you wouldn't believe how hard it was to find!
Well, I've started reading it, and it's quite odd. I'm having to learn how to understand it as...more
Well, I've started reading it, and it's quite odd. I'm having to learn how to understand it as...more
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Read in May, 2007
This was the first Nabokov novel I read, and I highly recommend it as an introduction. Although not as iconic as Lolita or as out-and-out brilliant as Pale Fire, this book both draws you in and keeps you at a distance, allowing you into its world but not inside the main character's head-- at least, not as much as his later works. Significantly, this is one of Nabokov's few novels (are there any other than this one?) that is not narrated in the first person. If prolonged, thoughtful...more
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Read in April, 2008
I read this book as a "spin-off" from the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran" -- a book I probably would give ten stars if I could. However, I found "Invitation to a Beheading" extraordinarily difficult to read. It is very surrealistic and , I thought, could make its main point--about how bad conformity can be and beware of state-involvement in your life, etc.--more effectively in far fewer pages. There are definitely some very darkly humorous anecdotes in the tale, ...more
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Read in November, 2006
A few people to whom I've recommended this novel haven't liked it as much as I have. I have a feeling that it's one of those novels which is hard to get into unless you're discussing it with a class or book club or a group of friends. The interplay of real and make believe brings some amount of controversy to various readings of the text - what different worlds or characters represent, what the ending actually is, etc - as is the case with most books whose setting and interpretation are rather u...more
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Read in June, 2008
Nabokov is like a bad habit: I want desperately to know what life would be like without him (would I, or anyone else for that matter, have any sense of style?), but I also refuse to imagine such a reality. The refusal is in part fear that the imagination that he temporarily lends to me like a pawn shop proprietor -- on dirty loan, complete codependency -- might imprint the tangible. It's bearable this way.
This book is utterly delicious, its absurd characters doing absurd things, the waking...more
This book is utterly delicious, its absurd characters doing absurd things, the waking...more
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Read in January, 2003
recommends it for:
The Patriot Act covers Ghostic Turpitude, actually.
Imagine an irrational world, if you can imagine one more irrational than the one we live in, where a man can be incarcerated and sentenced to death for a crime that has no definition and is inexplainable. Who would want to be executed for gnostic turpitude? Now imagine that Nabokov knew what the world would look like in the 21st Century, and that it would involve in-laws who really love their furniture and a death sentence. It's not far off from the irrational world we really live in. Semi-alleg...more
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Read in January, 2005
recommends it for:
writers
Nabokov won me over with this book. His facility with writing astounds, and the manner in which he plays with words to create or evoke images can be breathtaking. I appreciate this book as a writer, however, far more than I do as a reader; the plot leaves something to be desired, and the story is slow-moving and difficult at times to follow (though that may be a result of the translation). His prose, however, far more than makes up for any shortcomings of his plot. This is my favorite book, an...more
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Like Kawabata's "House of Sleeping Beauties" this relatively obscure work provides a major key to the author's thematic preoccupations. Nabokov's often camouflaged (but always important) metaphysical concerns are laid bare for even the casual reader to explore. Brian Boyd rates this as one of VN's major masterpieces (alongside Defense, Gift, Lolita, Speak Memory, Pale Fire, and Ada) but I'd rank it a relative peg lower. Still an amazing achivement, a taut dystopian mystery and one of t...more
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Read in June, 2008
It's my first reading of Invitation to a Beheading, and I definitely want to go back and re-read it. There are all sorts of details and clues that tell us this world is a different one. It was confusing, but I hope to get more out of it. For those who haven't read it, it's about a man on death row who doesn't know what day he will be executed, and no one will tell him when. He occupies himself in various revealing ways, and we are left to conclude that he is on trial for being different or "...more
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Read in June, 2007
Not worth reading when genuine masterpieces from Nabokov exist. In "Invitation to a Beheading," we meet Cincinnatus C., who will soon be executed for the indefinable crime of "gnostic turpitude." He dissolves his jail, his jailers, and eventually the entire world using only his pen and his mind. Could have been an arresting work of fantasy; had Nabokov himself written it 20 years later, it probably would have been. Read "Pale Fire" or "Lolita" instead, if
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Read in September, 2007
I had second thoughts upon starting this book: it's heavy on the fantasy, and the style is more ornate and contrived than in my favorite Nabokov novels (such as Lolita and Pnin). But somewhere around the middle I found myself drawn in and dazzled by Nabokov's genius and ended up really enjoying it. My only recommendation is that you not read the synopsis on the jacket - for some inexplicable reason it gives away the ending, which takes away some of the suspense.
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Read in December, 2006
دعوت به مراسم گردن زنی
روایت ابتذالی سازمان یافته که هدف غاییش سلب هویت از انسان است
از مقدمه مترجم
و سین سیناتوس انسان محکوم این داستان که خود نیز زندانی توهمات خویش است و زیستن در زندانی عجیب با زندانبان و جلادی مضحک ولی واقعی و صاحب قدرت
روایت ابتذالی سازمان یافته که هدف غاییش سلب هویت از انسان است
از مقدمه مترجم
و سین سیناتوس انسان محکوم این داستان که خود نیز زندانی توهمات خویش است و زیستن در زندانی عجیب با زندانبان و جلادی مضحک ولی واقعی و صاحب قدرت
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Read in May, 2008
This was my first time reading Nabokov.
I liked the way the writing just flowed from page to page. I liked the confusion and disjointedness of the story. However, I did not like the way the blurb on the back of the book gave away the ending. If you read the blurb, you already read the end of the novel. What is up with that?
Definitely a book to make you think. Tho it was a quick read. I plan to read more his work in the neat future.
I liked the way the writing just flowed from page to page. I liked the confusion and disjointedness of the story. However, I did not like the way the blurb on the back of the book gave away the ending. If you read the blurb, you already read the end of the novel. What is up with that?
Definitely a book to make you think. Tho it was a quick read. I plan to read more his work in the neat future.
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recommends it for:
those who think life may be a dream you had a 1000 years ago
life as a life sentence? a fever dream of intense anxiety and existential isolation? a marvelous surfeit of aesthetically pleasing surrealism? all? none? i'm not sure yet. all of nabokov's stlylistic trademarks are at work, but they are magnified and refracted to such a degree in this work that i feel like i can not offer critical comment at this time. uncritcally, i can say invitation to a beheading is balls to the walls hella awesome.
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It has been a few years since I read this one, but I have always considered it one of Nabokov's best. Surreal and creative as all hell. Most people might be put off by the ending. But, to me, it's Nabokov's middle finger jammed squarely into the reader's face. "Take that bitch, now I'll go fuck my landlord's 12-year old daughter." Not I have anything for 12 year-old girls, just trying to make a point is all.
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