description: 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, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed, he simply wills his executioners out of they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.
language: English
title: Invitation to a Beheading
titlecomplete: Invitation to a Beheading
characters: M'sieur Pierre, Rodrig Ivanovich, Cincinnatus C.
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, Russian Literature, Russia, Fiction, Dystopia, Fantasy
ratings_count: 16821
publisher: TarcherPerigee