Invitation to a Beheading

Invitation to a Beheading, novel by Nabokov, published in Russia in 1938 and in the U.S. in 1959.

Cincinnatus C. is in prison awaiting execution for his crime of “gnostical turpitude” or “opacity” since his soul has been impenetrable and not open to other people. There he recalls his past life, including marriage to Marthe, a nymphomaniac mother of two deformed children, and his own teaching of crippled children in a kindergarten. He also spends time thinking of ways to escape or talking with the prison director, Rodrig Ivanovich, and M'sieur Pierre, ostensibly another prisoner but actually his executioner. In time he learns to avoid his confusion of dreams of the past with present reality and discovers how to surround his soul with a structure of words that permits him to communicate with others. Nevertheless he is led to his execution, but as one part of him puts his head on the block, another part leaves to join the onlooking crowd of people who are “beings akin to him.”