Pozvání na popravu – Nabokov Vladimir (2025)

The death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in accordance with the law, in a whisper. In none of his other prose did Nabokov come as close to the literary world of Franz Kafka as he did in Invitation to a Beheading. The heightened perception of social fabric here combines with a feeling of deep existential trauma, which has a universal character and speaks all the more to the contemporary reader. The young hero awaits his execution, with neither the nature of his actual crime nor the specific circumstances of the impending execution being entirely clear. In this suffocating framework, the condemned man's only concern is to define himself against the world's indifference through his own writing. The novel comes from Nabokov's 'Russian' period, that is, from the time when the author no longer lived in his homeland but was part of the broad Russian diaspora in Europe. Although the story takes place in a fictional setting, the reference to the machinery of Stalin's reign of terror is undeniable. The book is thus considered a seminal work of 20th-century Russian literature. The novel is accompanied by an afterword by literary scholar Richard Müller.