کتاب  Pale Fire Oiginal A darkly comic novel of suspense literary idolatry and oneupmanship and political intrigue from one of the leading writers of the twentieth century the acclaimed author of Lolita  Halfpoem halfprosea creation of perfect beauty symmetry strangeness originality and moral truth One of the great works of art of this century Mary McCarthy New York Times bestselling author of The Group   An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures at the center of which is a 999line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive Vladimir Nabokovs witty novel achieves that rarest of things in literatureperfect tragicomic balance