Laughter in the dark

One could say that besides literature, Nabokov had three great passions – chess, butterflies and films. The novel in which art critic Albert Albinus lusts after seventeen-year-old aspiring actress Margot, starting a relationship game full of crippling obsession, seems to be a tribute to the medium of film itself. In fact, the first Russian edition of this work in 1932 was titled Kamera obskura, or “camera obscura”. Six years later, the author translated it into English under the title Laughter in the Dark, and its fame was sealed by the 1969 film adaptation of the same name.

In this book, which affects the reader with the same captivating power as the twilight of the cinema, the writer weaves the fabric of a psychological thriller about an unbalanced love affair in which the hunter becomes the prey. He thus sketches the outlines of a drama that becomes a precursor to the scandalous Lolita. The afterword was written by Jiří Kratochvil.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) is one of the most important world writers. The novel Invitation to a Beheading is published as the twentieth volume of the edition of the author's collected works, which Paseka Publishing has been publishing for more than twenty years. Nabokov's major novels The Gift (1938, Cz. 2007), Lolita (1955, Cz. 2003), Pale Fire (1962, Cz. 2011) and Ada, or Ardor (1969, Cz. 2015) were published in the series, for the translation of which Pavel Dominik received the State Prize.