Invitation to a Beheading Author:Vladimir Nabokov During the years he spent in Germany and France prior to his coming to the United States, Mr. Nabokov wrote a series of novels i Russian - among the finest ever written in that language - which were largely published in Berlin and Paris under the pseudonym of Sirin. INVITATION TO A BEHEADING, first published serially in a Russian emigre magazin... more »e, was the first of these novels to be translated into English. The translation, the result of a collaboration between the author and his son Dmitri, demonstrates to American readers that this book - hailed as a farce, an allegory and a specific study in terrorism - is classified, a masterpiece of prose writing.« less