Pale Fire is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov. Released in 1962, it is comprised of the titular poem written by the poet John Shade and a series of extremely digressive footnotes.
Characters[]
- Charles Kinbote - a "demented scholar" who edits and footnotes Pale Fire
- John Shade - a poet who writes a poem known as Pale Fire
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
The urbane authority that Vladimir Nabokov brought to every word he ever wrote, and the ironic amusement he cultivated in response to being uprooted and politically exiled twice in his life, never found fuller expression than in Pale Fire published in 1962 after the critical and popular success of Lolita had made him an international literary figure.
An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king.
Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, this darkly witty novel of suspense, literary one-upmanship, and political intrigue achieves that rarest of things in literature: perfect tragicomic balance.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | 2000 | A postmodernist novel that similarly plays with the very make-up of a novel |
| Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 1996 | A postmodernist and metafictional novel with similar themes |
| S. | Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams | 2013 | A novel with a similar story-in-story premise |
| Sartor Resartus | Thomas Carlyle | 1833-1834 | A novel with a similar premise and format |
| Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow | 1975 | A novel with similar themes |
| Liquidation | Imre Kertész | 2003 | A novel with similar themes |
| If on a Winter's Night a Traveller | Italo Calvino | 1979 | A postmodernist and metafictional novel with similar themes |
Sources[]
- Goodreads