Pale Fire is a novel in an unusual form: a long poem in four cantos by a fictional American poet, John Shade, together with a foreword, extensive commentary and index by his neighbour and self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote. The poem is about family, grief and life's meaning, but the commentary increasingly drifts into Kinbote's own strange story of a distant northern kingdom and its exiled king. Readers must decide how much of this is true, who is really speaking and what links the two texts. Playful, moving and puzzling, it is often named among the great experimental novels of the twentieth century.
Quotes
The heating system was a farce, depending as it did on registers in the floor wherefrom the tepid exhalations of a throbbing and groaning basement furnace were transmitted to the rooms with the faintness of a moribund's last breath.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slainby the false azure in the windowpane;I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and ILived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
No free man needs a God; but was I free?
What moment in that gradual decayDoes resurrection choose? What year?Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?Are some less lucky, or do all escape?A syllogism; other men dieBut I am not another: therefore I'll not die.