Books

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1962. First edition of this “witty, ironic and complex tour de force” (Hart, 521). Octavo, original black cloth. Fine in a very good dust jacket. "This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century" (Mary McCarthy). “This brilliant parody of literary scholarship is also an experimental synthesis of Nabokov’s talents for both poetry and prose. It extends and completes his mastery of unorthodox structure” (Encyclopedia of Literature, 851). Listed by Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled 'Pale Fire', written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. The novel has been hailed as one of Nabokov's most complex and rewarding works and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.