Pale Fire is a narrative about John Shade, a fictional author, and his poem, also called Pale Fire. Though Shade has been murdered, preventing him from completing Pale Fire, his self-appointed editor Charles Kinbote provides a commentary on the text. The commentary itself forms a narrative in which both authors are central characters.
Kinbote's interpretation of the poem is preposterous: he says Pale Fire was inspired by his own escape from the remote kingdom of Zembla, when the poem is clearly based on Shade's life. (Brian Boyd, who has written a two-volume biography of Nabokov, has his own interpretation of Pale Fire: in a commentary almost as long as the book itself, he argues Pale Fire is a ghost story in which the spirit of Shade is communicating with Kinbote.)
In its 1962 review of Pale Shade, the New York Times called the book "an elaborate spoof" and "a good deal of fun for Mr. Nabokov". Now, finally, the fun is shared in Hungarian.
Author: Péter Bozsik / Photo: www.britannica.com
