We are before a masterpiece, a "tour de force", a highly original, perplexing and devilishly funny novel, which is among the favorites of its own author and in which, in a matchless way, its rambunctious irony and deadly humor shine. "Pale Fire" is presented as the posthumous edition of a long poem written by John Shade, glory of American literature, shortly before he was assassinated. Indeed, the novel consists of the aforementioned poem, plus a prologue, a voluminous corpus of notes and an annotated index from the editor, Professor Charles Kinbote. Through his lengthy and nosy comments about the poem, about his friendship with Shade the months before his death, and about the distant kingdom of Zembla, which he had so hastily abandoned, Kinbote traces a hilarious self-portrait, in which he ends for giving himself away as an intolerant and haughty, eccentric and perverse individual, a...read more
