Invitation to a Beheading
6 hrs. 8 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Vladimir Nabokov
Author
Vladimir Nabokov
Narrator
Vladimir Soldatov
Narrator
Vladimir Soldatov
Description
Nabokov’s last Berlin novel and a grave warning not only for his contemporaries, but also for posterity.
In the novel, Cincinnatus C. is sentenced to death. He is accused of the most terrible of crimes—so rare and so horrible that even he cannot name it, preferring the oblique “opacity.” Cincinnatus is sent to his cell in an enormous fortress where, besides him, there is not a single prisoner. The jailer Rodion invites him to a waltz. Cincinnatus agrees. To agree is now everything that the totalitarian and absurd system to which he has become a victim requires of him. Events grow even more absurd, and against this backdrop, the only truly important and clearly defined event becomes increasingly visible—the execution that is coming.
In the novel, Cincinnatus C. is sentenced to death. He is accused of the most terrible of crimes—so rare and so horrible that even he cannot name it, preferring the oblique “opacity.” Cincinnatus is sent to his cell in an enormous fortress where, besides him, there is not a single prisoner. The jailer Rodion invites him to a waltz. Cincinnatus agrees. To agree is now everything that the totalitarian and absurd system to which he has become a victim requires of him. Events grow even more absurd, and against this backdrop, the only truly important and clearly defined event becomes increasingly visible—the execution that is coming.
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