William Boyd: Pale Fire

July’s Book of the Month was chosen by William Boyd, British novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter. Boyd is also this year’s winner of the Pleasure of Reading Prize. He is the author of nineteen novels including his earliest work, A Good Man in Africa and An Ice-Cream War and more recently The Predicament and Gabriel’s Moon.  

Boyd has received numerous awards, including The Whitbread First Novel Award and the Costa Book Award, and in 2005 he was appointed Commander of the Order of The British Empire for his services to Literature. His work has been translated into over 40 languages. 

William’s Book of the Month is Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. 

‘This is a unique novel. Only Nabokov could have pulled it off. It’s a novel I constantly recommend and boost. It seems like something of a challenge initially but stick with it. The novel takes the form of a 999-line poem with some hundreds of pages of pseudo-scholarly editorial comment on the meaning and references of the poem. The brilliant twist is that the editor (an out-of-control egomaniac) has got everything completely and utterly wrong. His vainglorious misinterpretations make up another entirely different narrative and are extremely, convulsingly, preposterously funny.  The original poem itself is actually very good (Nabokov was a fine poet) but the hilarious, absurd annotations steal the show. A totally assured and utter tour de force.’ 

Thank you to William Boyd for recommending this book! 

Every Book of the Month is sent to each of our projects with a bookplate sharing why it was chosen. You can order your copy of Pale Fire and our previous Books of the Month from our affiliate list on Bookshop.org:

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To see our previous Books of the Month, click here.

Photo credit: Trevor Leighton