Invitation To A Beheading

Author : Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0679725318
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Invitation to a Beheading written by Vladimir Nabokov and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1989-09-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141913800
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Invitation to a Beheading written by Vladimir Nabokov and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in Berlin in 1934, Invitation to a Beheading contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as ‘a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ... The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ... But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair’.

Author : Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher : Penguin Modern Classics
ISBN 13 : 9780141185040
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.4X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Annotated Lolita written by Vladimir Nabokov and published by Penguin Modern Classics. This book was released on 2000 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An annotated edition of Lolita, first published in 1970 with a revised edition in 1991. The novel which first established Nabokov's reputation with a large audience is a comic satire on sex and the American ways of life. It focuses on the love of a middle-aged European for an American nymphet.

Author : Julian W. Connolly
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780810112711
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.1X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading written by Julian W. Connolly and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an unnamed dream country, Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. After spending his last days in jail, he simply wills his executioners out of existence.

Author : Frances Larson
Publisher : Granta Books
ISBN 13 : 1847088015
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Severed written by Frances Larson and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.

Author : Vladimir Nabokov Literary Trust
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1101873701
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Think, Write, Speak written by Vladimir Nabokov Literary Trust and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich compilation of the previously uncollected Russian and English prose and interviews of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, edited by Nabokov experts Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy. “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child": so Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote in the introduction to his volume of selected prose, Strong Opinions. Think, Write, Speak follows up where that volume left off, with a rich compilation of his uncollected prose and interviews, from a 1921 essay about Cambridge to two final interviews in 1977. The chronological order allows us to watch the Cambridge student and the fledgling Berlin reviewer and poet turn into the acclaimed Paris émigré novelist whose stature brought him to teach in America, where his international success exploded with Lolita and propelled him back to Europe. Whether his subject is Proust or Pushkin, the sport of boxing or the privileges of democracy, Nabokov’s supreme individuality, his keen wit, and his alertness to the details of life illuminate the page.

Author : Hilary Mantel
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1429947659
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bring Up the Bodies written by Hilary Mantel and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize Winner of the 2012 Costa Book of the Year Award The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head? Bring Up the Bodies is one of The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2012, one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012 and one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2012

Author : Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0679727272
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bend Sinister written by Vladimir Nabokov and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1990-04-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. It is first and foremost a compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.

Author : Arno J. Mayer
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400823439
Total Pages : 736 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Furies written by Arno J. Mayer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great romance and fear of bloody revolution--strange blend of idealism and terror--have been superseded by blind faith in the bloodless expansion of human rights and global capitalism. Flying in the face of history, violence is dismissed as rare, immoral, and counterproductive. Arguing against this pervasive wishful thinking, the distinguished historian Arno J. Mayer revisits the two most tumultuous and influential revolutions of modern times: the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although these two upheavals arose in different environments, they followed similar courses. The thought and language of Enlightenment France were the glories of western civilization; those of tsarist Russia's intelligentsia were on its margins. Both revolutions began as revolts vowed to fight unreason, injustice, and inequality; both swept away old regimes and defied established religions in societies that were 85% peasant and illiterate; both entailed the terrifying return of repressed vengeance. Contrary to prevalent belief, Mayer argues, ideologies and personalities did not control events. Rather, the tide of violence overwhelmed the political actors who assumed power and were rudderless. Even the best plans could not stem the chaos that at once benefited and swallowed them. Mayer argues that we have ignored an essential part of all revolutions: the resistances to revolution, both domestic and foreign, which help fuel the spiral of terror. In his sweeping yet close comparison of the world's two transnational revolutions, Mayer follows their unfolding--from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Bolshevik Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses; the escalation of the initial violence into the reign of terror of 1793-95 and of 1918-21; the dismemberment of the hegemonic churches and religion of both societies; the "externalization" of the terror through the Napoleonic wars; and its "internalization" in Soviet Russia in the form of Stalin's "Terror in One Country." Making critical use of theory, old and new, Mayer breaks through unexamined assumptions and prevailing debates about the attributes of these particular revolutions to raise broader and more disturbing questions about the nature of revolutionary violence attending new foundations.

Author : Vladimir E. Alexandrov
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400861713
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nabokov's Otherworld written by Vladimir E. Alexandrov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major reexamination of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov as "literary gamesman," this book systematically shows that behind his ironic manipulation of narrative and his puzzle-like treatment of detail there lies an aesthetic rooted in his intuition of a transcendent realm and in his consequent redefinition of "nature" and "artifice" as synonyms. Beginning with Nabokov's discursive writings, Vladimir Alexandrov finds his world view centered on the experience of epiphany--characterized by a sudden fusion of varied sensory data and memories, a feeling of timelessness, and an intuition of immortality--which grants the true artist intimations of an "otherworld." Readings of The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lolita, and Pale Fire reveal the epiphanic experience to be a touchstone for the characters' metaphysical insightfulness, moral makeup, and aesthetic sensibility, and to be a structural model for how the narratives themselves are fashioned and for the nature of the reader's involvement with the text. In his conclusion, Alexandrov outlines several of Nabokov's possible intellectual and artistic debts to the brilliant and variegated culture that flourished in Russia on the eve of the Revolution. Nabokov emerges as less alienated from Russian culture than most of his emigre readers believed, and as less "modernist" than many of his Western readers still imagine. "Alexandrov's work is distinctive in that it applies an `otherworld' hypothesis as a consistent context to Nabokov's novels. The approach is obviously a fruitful one. Alexandrov is innovative in rooting Nabokov's ethics and aesthetics in the otherwordly and contributes greatly to Nabokov studies by examining certain key terms such as `commonsense,' `nature,' and `artifice.' In general Alexandrov's study leads to a much clearer understanding of Nabokov's metaphysics."--D. Barton Johnson, University of California, Santa Barbara Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.