Vladimir Nabokov

Cloud, Castle, Lake is a short story anthology by Vladimir Nabokov. It features five stories: "The Admiralty Spire," "Razor," "A Russian Beauty," "Cloud, Castle, Lake," and "Signs and Symbols."

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude," an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, …