Invitation to a Beheading is a surreal, darkly comic novel about Cincinnatus C., who has been condemned to death for a vaguely defined crime of being opaque and different from those around him. Held in a fortress, he receives visits from a jailer, a director and a cheerful fellow prisoner, while his execution date is withheld. The world around him seems made of painted scenery and empty rituals. Written in Russian in the 1930s, the book is a haunting fable of individuality against conformity and tyranny, and of the freedom of the imagination.