Name: Pale Fire
ISBN: 9780679723424

Synopsis

A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.

Recommendations

Generating recommendations…

Our AI is preparing recommendations for Pale Fire. This usually takes under a minute.

About Vladimir Vladimirovič Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovič Nabokov

Biography coming soon.

View author page

Quotes

View all

“All religions are based on obsolete terminology.”

Reader highlight

“A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.”

Reader highlight

“We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable.”

Reader highlight

“For we die every day; oblivion thrives Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives, And our best yesterdays are now foul piles Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.”

Reader highlight