Invitation to a Beheading (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Vladimir Nabokov
- First Published: 1935
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Dystopian
- Time of Work: The future
- Setting: The capital of a fictional European country
- Genres: Long fiction, Parable, Dystopian fiction
- Subjects: Prisoners, Crime or criminals, Surrealism, Europe or Europeans, Future, Writing, Capital punishment
- Locales: Europe
Characters Discussed
Cincinnatus C., a prisoner awaiting execution. This thirty-year-old schoolteacher is a frail, hypersensitive intellectual who lives in an unspecified land resembling Bolshevik Russia where conformity is unquestionable. His “crime” is only vaguely described as “gnostical turpitude”: He is out of step with society; he thinks forbidden thoughts. His main peculiarity is that he can see how the fact of death makes existence pointless. He sees everyone around him enjoying sensual pleasures, like animals, unaware that they are being fattened for slaughter....
[The entire page is 781 words long]
