Pale Fire

The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shades's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty and intolerant, but also mad, bad - and even dangerous. As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should.