Invitation to a beheading.
By: Translated by Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author.
Publisher: Putnam
Published: 1959
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng; rus
Number of pages: 223
Description: 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 existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.
Notes: Translation of Priglashenie na kaznʹ (romanized form)