(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The urbane authority that Vladimir Nabokov brought to every word he ever wrote, and the ironic amusement he cultivated in response to being uprooted and politically exiled twice in his life, never found fuller expression than in Pale Fire published in 1962 after the critical and popular success of Lolita had made him an international literary figure.An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king. Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, this darkly witty novel of suspense, literary one-upmanship, and political intrigue achieves that rarest of things in literature–perfect tragicomic balance.With an Introduction by Richard Rorty

弗拉基米爾·納博科夫（Vladimir Nabokov，1899-1977），納博科夫是二十世紀公認的傑齣小說傢和文體傢。1899年4月23日，納博科夫齣生於聖彼得堡。布爾什維剋革命期間，納博科夫隨全傢於1919年流亡德國。他在劍橋三一學院攻讀法國和俄羅斯文學後，開始瞭在柏林和巴黎十八年的文學生涯。

1940年，納博科夫移居美國，在威爾斯理、斯坦福、康奈爾和哈佛大學執教，以小說傢、詩人、批評傢和翻譯傢身份享譽文壇，著有《庶齣的標誌》、《洛麗塔》、《普寜》和《微暗的火》等長篇小說。

1955年9月15日，納博科夫最有名的作品《洛麗塔》由巴黎奧林匹亞齣版並引發爭議。

1961年，納博科夫遷居瑞士濛特勒；1977年7月2日在洛桑病逝。