Noted for its unusual form, its plot centers around the murder of an amateur poet, who has left behind the title poem, missing its final line.
Noted for its unusual form, its plot centers around the murder of an amateur poet, who has left behind the title poem, missing its final line. Although the poem begins as a typical meandering reminiscence of a childhood in which nothing happened, subsequent stanzas reveal the poet to have been a madman who believed himself to be the exiled king of a mythical country, Zembla. The principal narrator, Charles Kinbote, writes commentary on the poem and undergoes an existential crisis related to the delusion and insignificance of the poet, John Shade. For ten points identify this 999­line poem and its commentary, a work of Vladimir Nabokov (ne­BOH­kov).
Noted for its unusual form, its plot centers around the murder of an amateur poet, who has left behind the title poem, missing its final line.
Pale Fire