Pale Fire With an Introduction by Mary Gaitskill

<p>''A jack-in-the-box, a Faberg¿em, a clockwork toy, a chess problem, an infernal machine, a trap to catch reviewers, a cat-and-mouse game, a do-it-yourself novel . . . one of the great works of art of [the 20th] century'' <b>Mary McCarthy</b><br><br>''Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically'' <b>John Updike</b><br><br>''Phenomenally clever and very funny'' <b>William Boyd</b><br><br>''The surest demonstration of his own genius . . . that remarkable tour de force'' <b>Harold Bloom</b><br><br><b><i>I was the shadow of the waxwing slain</i></b><br><b><i>By the false azure in the windowpane;</i></b><br><b><i>I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I </i></b><br><b><i>Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.</i></b><br><br>An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, <i>Pale Fire</i> offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the centre of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just befor