Invitation to a Beheading (Vintage International) 9992

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude," an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed, he simply wills his executioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.

Роман написан на русском языке в берлинский период жизни писателя. Впервые опубликован в парижском журнале «Современные записки» (№№58-60) в 1935—1936 годах. Вышел отдельной книгой в 1938 году в парижском издательстве «Дом книги». Перевод на английский, выполненный под руководством Набокова его сыном Дмитрием, был издан в Нью-Йорке в 1959 году.