Enchanter, The

Nabokov described this novella, written in Paris in 1939 but only published twenty years later, as 'the first little throb of Lolita'. The plot is similar: a middle-aged man wedding an unattractive widow in order to indulge his paedophilic obsession with her daughter.

However, The Enchanter has an utterly different atmosphere, as time, place and even names remain a mystery. Nabokov transforms his protagonist's attempts to lull his twelve-year-old step-daughter into a state of 'enchantment' into a graceful, chilling fairytale.

Review: Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike
"Masterly ... brilliant." -- V. S. Pritchett, The New York Review of Books
"A gem to be appreciated by any admirer of the most graceful and provocative literary craftsman." -- Chicago Tribune
"One of the best books of the year ... [The Enchanter] displays the supple clarity of a master." -- Boston Globe
"Enchanting ... sleekly wrought." -- Newsweek

Author Biography: Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.