The Waltz Invention is a tragicomedy in three acts written by Vladimir Nabokov in Russian as Izobretenie Val'sa in 1938. It was first published in Russkie Zapiski in Paris in the same year. Nabokov translated it at that time into English for the first time. The second English translation was made by Dmitri Nabokov in 1964 with the help of his father who also made some alterations; it was published in 1966. The play takes place in an unnamed country in about 1935. Nabokov makes the point in the 1965 written foreword that while the work sounds a "prophetic forenote" - the invention is a weapon of mass destruction - he has no political message and does not support the peaceniks of his time. Source: Wikipedia (en)