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  • Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov book cover
  • Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov book cover
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Invitation to a Beheading

by Vladimir Nabokov

A sentence in an irrational world

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A sentence in an irrational world

In an unnamed country governed by an unexplained order, Cincinnatus C. faces execution for “gnostical turpitude,” a crime the description identifies as imaginary and indefinable. His final days unfold in an absurd jail populated by strange visitors, including jailers, an executioner posing as a fellow prisoner, and in-laws who bring their furniture into his cell. The premise turns a death sentence into a portrait of a world whose rules resist explanation, with Cincinnatus’s refusal of that world shaping the book’s striking central conflict.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • For readers interested in literary fiction built around an absurd or irrational society.
  • For those drawn to stories about confinement, arbitrary authority, and a protagonist facing an unexplained sentence.

Themes

Absurdity and irrationalityConfinement and executionArbitrary authorityResistance to an imposed reality

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

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.
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