PublishedPenguin Modern Classics, August 2000 |
ISBN9780141185262 |
FormatSoftcover, 256 pages |
Dimensions19.8cm × 12.9cm × 1.5cm |
Nabokov's suspenseful whodunit and one of his most acclaimed worksThe American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote.
Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should. Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterwork is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.
