Books

First Printing. A Fine copy in smooth black cloth, spine gilt, red topstain, red endpapers, in a Very Good white black and red first issue dustwrapper, not price-clipped, unfaded, with several short tears with tape mends to verso. 315pp. Highly touted tour-de-force parody of academic verse and criticism, difficult to find in better condition. Q20711.

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.