The Enchanter

The Enchanter is the Ur-Lolita, the precursor to Nabokov's classic novel. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls, whose coltish grace and subconscious coquetry reveal, to his mind, a special bud on the verge of bloom. "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 twentieth century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977. "One of the best books of the year . . . The Enchanter] displays the supple clarity of a master." -- The Boston Globe "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike