Pale Fire

1 About this book

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 written by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. Nabokov wrote Pale Fire in 1960–61, after the success of Lolita had made him financially independent, allowing him to retire from teaching and return to Europe. Nabokov began writing the novel in Nice and completed it in Montreux, Switzerland.

While Lolita remains his most famous work, many critics and scholars cite Pale Fire as Vladimir Nabokov's magnum opus. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel", and the critic Harold Bloom called it "the surest demonstration of his own genius ... that remarkable tour de force".

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

• Immigrants
• Experimental fiction
• Kings and rulers
• Assassination
• Authors