A bizarre tesseract of a novel, Pale Fire is, ostensibly, a poem, but it is really the Foreword, the Poem, The Footnotes, and the Index. The foreword introduces you to a strange man from a country you've never heard of who professes to be the good friend of the author of the poem 'Pale Fire' and then presents, with much further ado, the poem in question followed by his opinions and histories (which have very little to do with the poem itself). I switched back and forth by reading one canto, the footnotes for it, then the next, and so on, which helped me see Shade and Kinbote as equal protagonists. It it amusing and bizarre and leaves you wondering who, if anyone, was the hero of the tale, and who, if anyone, was ever telling the truth.