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Well, it's basically a 999 line poem with a commentary.  Yeah, I know.  Doesn't sound good at first.

But, see, it's really neat because the commentary and the poem tell a story that you kind of figure out as you read it.  

Then, after you finish the book, if you read it again, there's a whole other mystery going on inside the story that you don't see the first time you read it.

I don't know how much I should give away- I mean, I want people to read it, but half the fun is finding out what happens.

Well, it was written in 1962, so I guess it's either just fiction or literature.

But it's sort of fantasy-like.

See, the poem is by a guy named John Shade, and it's about his life, and how his daughter died, and how he's searching for the answer to whether or not there's an afterlife.  The commentary is by Shade's "friend" Charles Kinbote, but it isn't really a commentary on the poem.  It turns into this story about a guy named Charles, King of Zembla and you also find out about how Shade and Kinbote are related, and what happened to Shade.