Science Fair Project Encyclopedia Pale Fire (1962) is a novel by
Vladimir Nabokov, his fourteenth in total and fifth in English.
Many of Nabokov's fans consider it one of his most significant
books (typically alongside Lolita), and it has drawn a great
deal of critical attention, with commentators offering a wide
variety of interpretations. Pale Fire is at first glance the
publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by
the famous American poet John Shade. The Foreword, extensive
Commentary, and Index are by Shade's self-appointed biographer,
Charles Kinbote, who is Shade's neighbor in the small college
town of New Wye. The name of the book alludes to a metaphor
about creativity and inspiration from Shakespeare's Timon of
Athens: "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she
snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3). Some interpreters have
noted a secondary reference to Hamlet, where the Ghost remarks
how the glow-worm "'gins to pale his uneffectual fire" (Act I,
scene 5). Shade is murder