Our Notes & References

First edition of Nabokov’s anti-totalitarian fantasy, “an allegory reminiscent of Kafka’s The Trial” (Terras), written in 1934 with a first draft completed “in one fortnight of wonderful excitement and sustained inspiration” (Nabokov himself, quoted by Juliar).

Invitation to a Beheading belongs to nine early Nabokov’s novels which were published under his pen name V. Sirin. Written during Nabokov’s time in Berlin and when Hitler had just arrived to power, the novel details the final twenty days of Cincinnatus C., a citizen of a fictitious country, who is imprisoned and sentenced to death for being unable to blend in and become part of the world around him.

Interestingly, the novel was published again, in Russian, in 1966 by the Editions Victor of Paris, “an imprint that belonged to Radio Liberty and probably supported by the CIA […] for clandestine distribution in the Soviet Union” (Juliar, also quoting Boyd). It had already been the first of Nabokov’s books which his only son Dmitriy translated into English, in 1959.

Provenance

S. Samarin (ie. Serge Samarine, 1924-1995; Irish of Russian birth from the important aristocratic Samarin family, translator for international organisations, man of letters, author in French who received the ‘Prix Roberge’ of the Académie Française in 1978; his handwriiten name in Russian in pencil to first blank leaf, dated 1945).

Bibliography

Juliar A16.1; Terras p. 538.