100 stars!

This is by far one of the most absurd, imaginative, and metaphorically insightful works of art I have ever come across. It's as if a Dali painting were transformed into a novel. The writing is truly brilliant.

"Invitation to a Beheading" has a phenomenological tone, following the tradition of Husserl but more closely resembling Gaston Bachelard's phenomenology. It constantly inserts the ridiculous into the narrative, jolting us out of our familiarity and our forgetting of the nature of our reality. For example, a family brings their furniture with them to jail for a short visit to an inmate. There's a spider that lives in the cell with the protagonist and is fed and coddled. The execution ceremony resembles a circus/variety-show act. Chairs and furniture move during the night and "never spend the night in the same spot twice". And there are seemingly nonsensical meanderings like the observation that "an insane man mistakes his visiting kin for galaxies, logarithms, low-haunched hyenas".

I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" this work in the traditional sense. Although the book is relatively short, it took me weeks to plod through it. Still, it quickly became one of my "favorites" and a work I would recommend to any of my literary friends without hesitation. There's no doubt that, as some have complained, this work lacks a "plot" or "character development". However, it is a surreal masterpiece that reveals the absurdity in our own (moral, social) conventions.

Highly recommended, but you probably won't enjoy it if you're looking for a book with a "plot" and if you're easily frustrated by one in which not much seems to "happen". "Invitation to a Beheading" is more like philosophy than a novel.

Just like Cincinnatus, I sat behind the desk and picked up the pen. The words lined up one after another, and there was no reader in the process. Even from the window, no one peeked to see if this imprisoned man was dead or alive. In that gloomy space, the lines flowed like a blood torrent on the page. The tears in my eyes wouldn't stop flowing.

I pounded on the door because the sound of footsteps could be heard, but there was no encounter. It was just me and that was it. Maybe that was enough, but it wasn't the case. For those who I didn't like, those who didn't come to see me, those who didn't do anything to save me, I tore myself apart piece by piece.

So it happened that my hands caressed the petal of the flower. My feet were drawn to the desired places. My hair danced with the breeze and felt an indescribable pleasure of liberation. No longer were my eyes imprisoned in sadness, but rather they caught a little bit of joy in the corner. And my heart, it pounded for life.

But the guard pounded on the door and the colors faded. The dark color prevailed and I took the daily count to complete it. There was not even a hint of hope, and I was resigned to execution.

And finally, the rope wrapped around my neck. With a peaceful heart, I awaited the end, longing for the touch of death. But at the last moment, the knot loosened and at that moment, it wrapped around my head and feet.

It pulled me from the bonds to a place I had never been before. To colors I had never seen. To people I loved. To sounds that were soul-soothing and to a world that could be different.

The shards came back together and became one. No longer did each of them ask questions in this dusty place. They were hidden within me. I turned my eyes around, looking for the rope, but it was already gone. It wanted to bring only me back to myself.

When I returned, a reader also appeared. An encounter came and life behind bars was no longer a resident. Now time had come to move forward and I was no longer an executed person. The knot that tied my existence bound me.

The harmony of this book and the empathy with soulless humans, it counted among the memorable experiences of yesterday. I'm glad that I achieved the desired satisfaction from these events. The only advice related to the book is not to read this translation and that's it. I hope you're not imprisoned.

Nabokov wrote several novels during his time in Berlin. One of them, unlike "Laughter in the Dark," has a fantastical setting. The story is rather straightforward - a man is confined in his cell, waiting for execution. The action unfolds over a span of days, perhaps weeks at most. I vividly recall the impact it had on me upon finishing the book. I felt queasy, with my legs trembling.

Similar to "Laughter in the Dark," this novel strikes me as being fear-based. Nabokov might not appreciate my attempts to analyze his works like a phrenologist examining the bumps on his skull. However, my impression is that for both novels, the emotion takes precedence. Here, it is the horror of awaiting execution. The story is pared down to its bare essentials, leaving only that fact and the reader's emotional reaction to it.

I had initially thought of revisiting the book, which I had borrowed from the town library along with numerous Graham Green novels. But in the intervening years, a significant cultural shift has occurred. Both authors have vanished not only from the town library but, according to the catalogue, from virtually all the libraries in the county. Time marches on, and tastes change.

The book is actually 200 pages long, but it ended up costing as much as a thousand-page book.

Note: The two stars I gave were because of the enjoyment of reading the reviews and examinations of the children during the group reading of the book. Otherwise, I would never have come to this book on my own.

This situation is quite strange. It makes one wonder why the price is so disproportionate to the number of pages. Maybe there are other factors involved, such as the quality of the paper, the printing process, or the reputation of the author.

However, from a reader's perspective, it can be a bit disappointing. One expects to get a certain amount of content for the price paid. In this case, it seems that the value for money is not quite right.

Despite this, the reviews and examinations of the children during the group reading did add some value to the experience. It was interesting to see their perspectives and interpretations of the book.

Overall, while the price of the book may be a drawback, the group reading and the children's reviews did make it a somewhat worthwhile experience.

The title is both shrill and a catalyst, containing within it the absurdity of an unheard-of situation like that of a perfect oxymoron. In fact, the entire novel is like this. Repeatedly compared to Kafka's works, especially to the novels "The Castle" and "The Trial", it is Nabokov himself who clarifies that the Prague writer's production was completely unknown to him when in 1935, in Berlin, where he had taken refuge to flee the Bolshevik regime, he wrote this novel. Therefore, it should be enjoyed in its absolute literary independence. And if a reference were to be made, it would surely be to the novel "The Gift", left unfinished in writing due to the urgent need to give birth to this one. Not having read it, I cannot venture more, at most advising future readers to proceed in the opposite sense, compared to mine, in reading the two. Another possible interpretation, rejected by the author, is that of reading the work as a great metaphor for the Bolshevik and Nazi regimes, which are absolutely incomparable.

As for its content, it presents us with the disrupted life of Cincinnatus, who for no apparent reason is condemned to death and taken to a fortress for what would seem to be an imminent execution. In reality, the former teacher, condemned to immediate death, upon arriving at his destination, will begin a new life, unexpected, but unfortunately under the sign of the most absolute procrastination, neither sought nor desired and endured as a punishment even greater than his actual guilt. In short, a new condemnation that measures him from the very beginning with atypical and completely surreal situations, the gallery of which is a pleasant surprise for the reader. We find ourselves in a continuous inverted perspective that modifies every evaluative parameter in the reader but also in the character, the victim of an absurd condemnation, whose guilt is to be opaque. "Accused of the most可怕的 of crimes, the gnostic turpitude so rare and indescribable as to make it necessary to resort to circumlocutions such as 'impenetrability', 'opacity', condemned for that crime to decapitation...". In reality, upon closer inspection, the very physical, material, real substance of the condemned man is called into question from the very beginning, upon arriving at the fortress. The first night he goes to bed after decomposing into the individual parts that make up the body, but Nabokov's ability seems almost to relegate this magical, unreal, transcendent character to the background, because it focuses attention on the mental process of Cincinnatus himself and on the tangible and concrete value that his perception of reality has. It is clear from the very beginning to the protagonist that the gallery of people who will approach him with the intention of taking care of him: the prison director, Rodrig Ivanovic, who assumes the role of a hotel director, Rodion, the zealous jailer, the lawyer, a useless blotch, are only "specters", "maned wolves", "parodies" to which he will obey. What matters to him in the end, repeated parodistically until the end, is to know the temporal terms of the condemnation. In these continuous inversions of the plane of reality with that of fiction, elevated to farce and parody, only the vivid thoughts of the prisoner assert the right to be real. And yet they are closely linked to the individual manifestations of the real: the walls of the cell, its floor, the cot, the chair, the table, the books above and outside the city that domineeringly looms in memory together with the miserable remnants of his existence. "These were the things that Cincinnatus saw and felt through the walls, while the clock struck the hours, even though, in fact, everything in that city was always dead and可怕 compared to the secret life of Cincinnatus and his guilty flame, even though he knew perfectly well that, and also knew that there is no hope, yet, at that moment, he still desired, with all his strength, to find himself in those bright streets so familiar... but then the chimes of the clock ceased, the imaginary sky clouded over and the prison came back into force." The prison, precisely, in itself, almost an entity endowed with autonomous life, a place of confinement but also an incredibly open physical space capable of allowing incursions into its other spaces and even outside it, but be careful, in such absurdity, the possibility of an escape is never envisaged, for that one will have to wait for another place, another event, another possibility... Happy reading!

While one of my lesser-liked works by Nabokov, this was an uncomfortable read. It contains a plethora of timely ideas and curiosities that still feel remarkably fresh nearly a century after its original publication.

Invitation to a Beheading is the charming title of this dystopian story. Originally published as a series in a Russian magazine in the 1930s, it is set in a fictional totalitarian country. The story introduces us to Cincinnatus, a teacher who has been convicted for being different. We don't precisely know what he did, and neither does he. Here he is, confined in a prison cell, doomed to be executed at an unknown future point, and all he has left is his imagination.

I can't determine if this is intended to offer hope for a better world or to make us realize that such a thing may not exist. Although bleak in its subject matter, Nabokov doesn't shy away from his typical wit and humour, revealing the absurdity of totalitarianism. He clearly takes the stance that not conforming to norms will lead to punishment, yet he's also not willing to tell you that conforming is worthwhile.

Cincinnatus' frustration stems not from the death sentence itself but from the fact that no one tells him when his execution will occur. He believes he deserves to know when the axe will fall, and there's an irony in this. At first glance, it seems like a logical wish, but upon further reflection, it's utterly pointless. None of us know when we're going to die, and the nihilist conclusion is that, truly, it doesn't matter. If you're going to be the only non-conformist among people living in blissful ignorance, you have the options of either losing your dignity by abandoning your beliefs or of never being fully taken seriously. There are no winning options.

There's so much irrationality in this that it leads to frustration. It took me months to finish this. While part of it is because I'm a relatively slow reader in Russian, there was also the aspect of me not being able to read more than a few pages at a time. Too much of this felt weird in a disturbing way, surreal and Kafka-esque in a manner that I personally find difficult to digest. However, if surrealism in literature is something you enjoy, this will be right up your alley.

Sizzling prose is often a captivating element in literature.

I firmly believe that chapter 8 is going to evolve into one of my personal literary classics. It is the soliloquy of a condemned prisoner. This, along with his other passages in solitary confinement and the ending, creates a worthy addition to the genre of anti-death penalty fiction. It stands alongside works by Russians like Leonid Andreyev's "Seven Who Were Hanged" and Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot". Nabokov's father and grandfather both actively campaigned against the death penalty while serving in the Russian government.

The bizarre farce within the story was initially difficult for me to reconcile with. However, after being guided to view the book as a specific satire on Soviet official philosophy of life and its intellectual background in 19th-century radical circles, particularly the materialist, scientific-determinist school of Chernyshevsky and those who followed, such as Lenin, I began to understand it. For example, I initially had doubts about the novel when I was introduced to the wife. I suppose I still had some trust issues lingering from reading "Lolita". But then I realized that she was a satirical representation of open marriages as advocated in Chernyshevsky's novel, which Dostoyevsky also satirized in "Demons". In fact, Dostoyevsky, my favorite author, spent his later life engaged in a struggle against this materialist-determinist trend in radical thought. So, I am more than willing to embrace Nabokov's novel that opposes it.

In this story, people lack true personhood, except for Cincinnatus, who has 'gnostical turpitude' (his capital crime) because he possesses a subjectivity that science and the gaze of others cannot fathom. He has glimpses of a future day when the shoddy farce and philosophy of life surrounding him will dissipate, and people will once again be able to be their true selves. In fact, he looks forward to the 21st century for a life that is 'ennobled and spiritualized'. I wonder if we can offer him any assistance.

I often find myself impatient with writers who focus on writing about writing or similar convoluted topics. Given Nabokov's somewhat detached stance, this work is often misinterpreted in that way. However, I am inclined to go with the interpretation I have presented above, as it makes the most sense to me.

The writing is rather beautiful. Maybe not the perfect word choice, but I'm too lazy to consult the thesaurus. Was it effective? It was simple yet it managed to engage my imagination. There was a particular passage (among many) where Cincinnatus was describing his cell. As his mind wandered, so did mine, not due to lack of interest or boredom. I read it perhaps five times before I could force myself to move on.

This book left me scratching the right side of my head, the underdeveloped and nearly concave side, in confusion. My usual readings (aside from the fluff) have direct practical applications, functionality, numbers... None of which are relevant when it comes to Ahrt. * It reminds me of a glass vase display I saw long ago. The curves of the vases were visible, but they had been pulled apart while still molten, so that the halves were joined by drooping strands. I thought of Venus flytraps with salivary strands, but the Ahrtist’s blurb spoke of representing urban deterioration and the torturous agony of our separation from nature... Huh? It also reminds me of a ceramic display of heads with phallic noses (ceramic Ahrtists seem to love phalluses) that appeared to be crudely and haphazardly thrown together. But a closer inspection revealed careful detailing, and my initial reaction of "my four-year-old could make that!" (if I had a four-year-old) changed to "that's pretty cool." (The Ahrtist's blurb spoke of childhood memories of faces... Ahrtists...) Literature is like that glass and ceramic to me, where I often tend to take too literal an interpretation and miss its true worth.

Since I can't suppress my over-literal tendency, I have two thoughts on what this story means. "Means." 1) It's one heck of a description of writer's block. This isn't an original thought as it stems from C's difficulty in writing a letter. The cell and interchangeable jailers represent publishers who pressure for a cookie-cutter action bestseller. The unfaithful wife is the bestseller plot that gives itself to others while C dawdles (Dan Brown?). The crime is the desire to write Ahrt. Eh? 2) It's a sinister allegory on social conformity. Again, not original as the book repeatedly refers to his difference from others, an "opaqueness."

I do think I'm missing the point. What's the significance of the mother's visit and Emmie? The oak novel and the draft in the cell turning into a leafy breeze with an acorn dropping out of nowhere? The references to things being off-center, like the peonies placed off-center on the table before the first interview, the light off-center in the ceiling, the scaffold off-center in the plaza?

All I know is that I don't understand Ahrt. I need the Ahrtist to explain, and sometimes the Ahrtist has no explanation.

Someone give me a math problem. This dunce cap is squeezing the left side of my head, and I'd like to take it off.

*Copied from karen's shelf name.

Although I'm sure Nabakov is correct when he says (in his slightly pompous Foreward) that he had no prior knowledge of Kafka's work, this still has certain parallels to The Trial.

Cinicinnitus is in jail awaiting the day of his execution, seemingly just for being somehow different to everyone else in society. This unjust situation immediately draws a parallel with the Kafkaesque theme of the individual's powerlessness and absurd persecution.

Nabakov deploys his usual mordant (and sometimes absurdist) black humour to great effect. His writing style, with its sharp wit and darkly comical descriptions, adds an extra layer of complexity to the story.

The use of humour in such a serious context not only provides a form of relief for the reader but also serves to highlight the absurdity and injustice of the situation.

It makes us question the nature of society and the treatment of those who are different.

Overall, Nabakov's work, despite his claim of no prior knowledge of Kafka, manages to capture some of the same themes and emotions that are characteristic of Kafka's literature.

Senecio, the main character of the book, is a man who has been imprisoned for not being transparent and is sitting waiting for the execution of his death sentence. No one likes him and everyone in prison torments him in some way. One person wins his trust and then betrays him, another person mocks and insults him, one person ignores him, and one person shows excessive attention. Everyone has their own way.

Senecio only wants two things from his fellow prisoners: first, to see his wife even though he knows she has never cared about Senecio, and second, to be informed of the time of his execution. And they torment Senecio by not answering these two requests.

We see Senecio from two different perspectives: one is the one who is sitting in prison waiting to be hanged, and the other is perhaps in his mind (or perhaps in a free world) where he can travel wherever he wants, see whoever he wants, and do whatever he wants without having to answer to anyone or be condemned for being himself.

Throughout this story, we witness Senecio's mental struggle to come to terms with the imprisonment of his soul in a cell. The torture he endures makes it impossible for him to do anything properly and focused because the thought that his unfinished work will be left alone does not let him. Something that can also be true for us who are not sitting in a cell waiting for execution.

This book is about a man who is different from other people, and also about the people who do not accept this difference and condemn such a person to justice and death. We do not exactly understand what not being transparent means, but we can make some guesses. I think Mr. Nabokov deliberately did not give a specific meaning to it so that we can have our own free interpretations.

This book is full of symbols and metaphors, and the harmony of the book made me notice many of them and learn from them.

The book is recommended if you like the genre of surrealism, are interested in the human search for the meaning of life, respect the differences between people, enjoy the description of a lot of space and nature, enjoy getting lost in the thoughts of the main character, can sit with consecutive chapters where nothing special happens and only the mental thoughts of the character are expressed, and have no problem with an open ending.

Thank you for making a pleasant and memorable experience possible with the harmony of the book ♡

**One vs. All**

Sine-Sinatous spends his days in prison cell in such a way that it's unknown whether he'll feel the sunlight of tomorrow or not! The death sentence has been issued and there's no doubt in its execution, but little importance is given to his only request based on announcing the date of the sentence's execution. He has no resemblance or common ground with those around him. The flames of emotions and feelings within him are neatly suppressed, and in these last days, in the face of the hardships and difficulties of the times, he resorts to the only accessible means, "writing". Now that he has been exiled and is alone, the only option left for him is to communicate with the pen and paper, and sometimes even draw lines on the cell wall. Now that he is truly confined and doesn't even have the opportunity to sleep at night, perhaps he can find a conversation with the fictional and self-created world that gives him a little sense of understanding.

The second experience of accompanying Nabokov was not exciting for me at least as much as the defense of Luizin. Besides the fact that this book, despite its small volume, is not at all easy to read, the mention of minute details and numerous symbols and sometimes the excessive descriptions that have no specific function in advancing the story turned the ritual of neck-breaking for me into a tiresome book. Of course, overlooking the positive points and the amazing prose of Nabokov is unfair to the author and the work.

Sine-Sinatous was registered in my memory as one of the memorable characters. A tree that has no escape from fate, **burning**.

Twenty-fourth of Farvardin, zero.

When you find your love, that's it. Nabokov is one of those writers that you read not to analyze his works, but simply to enjoy the beauty of the style, in the game.

"The Invitation" at the end of ends is indeed a game. A game of words, motives, and genre. The turning of reality and unreality. As with everything in Nabokov, the question "What is real?" arises. However, here you have a presentation from the beginning to the end. You have characters, you have a scene, you have props. You have a play with Dostoyevsky (although it is interesting that Nabokov considered him a third-rate writer). Nabokov, as a true master, leads you to the end and gives you a million hints because in Nabokov every word is used for a reason and at the very end leaves you with the choice of interpretation. Is he dead? Is he alive? Is this real or is it a dream? But again, as I said, on the first reading simply ignore all that because of the beauty. That totalitarian world is beautiful because Nabokov's style is beautiful. I will always say that that man made ugly things beautiful with his writing...

Nabokov's works are like a magical labyrinth, inviting readers to explore and get lost in the charm of his words. His unique style and creative approach make each of his novels a captivating experience. Whether it's the complex characters, the intricate plots, or the thought-provoking themes, Nabokov always manages to leave a lasting impression on his readers.

In "The Invitation," for example, the story unfolds in a mysterious and often disturbing way. The reader is constantly left guessing about the true nature of the events and the characters involved. Nabokov's use of language and imagery adds to the overall atmosphere of the story, making it both fascinating and a little bit eerie.

Despite the challenges that Nabokov's works may present, they are well worth the effort. His writing is a celebration of the power of language and the imagination, and it has the ability to transport readers to another world and make them see things in a new light.