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The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness by Lila Azam Zanganeh: book review




The Enchanter (2011) is named after the unpublished 1939 novella by Russian author, Vladimir Nabokov, the precursor to his well-known novel Lolita (1955) – it was rediscovered twenty years later, translated by his son, Dimitri, and published in 1985 and 1991. The title is also a reference to Nabokov’s view that “Writers may be Teachers, Storytellers, or Enchanters.” The “real writer, the Enchanter” he said was a “fellow who sends planets spinning.”

Zanganeh’s book is an exploration of Nabokov’s perceptions of happiness, seen through “a handful” of his novels and works, such as The Enchanter (1939), The Gift (1938), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), Lolita (1955), Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1967) and his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951). The author also includes a transcript of her interview with Nabokov, conducted when he was on holiday at Lake Como in 1968.

Zanganeh describes Nabokov (1899-1977) as the “great writer of happiness.” Her inspiration to write the book was from the protagonist in The Gift who dreamed of writing A Practical Handbook: How to Be Happy.

But this is not a practical handbook. The fifteen chapters explore “Alice-like variations” of an aspect of happiness in Nabokov’s life, referring to Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice in Wonderland. This is also not a chronological journey through Nabokov’s life – it starts about three months before his death in Switzerland, then returns to 1903 when he was four years old near St. Petersburg in Russia.

Although it is not a biography, Zanganeh discusses Nabokov’s life in Vyra, his girlfriends, his departure from Russia in 1917, and the meeting of Vera Evseevna Slonim whom he met on May 8, 1923 on a bridge in Berlin. He married her in 1925. The author also writes of their son Dimitri, born in 1934 (who died after this book’s publication in 2012), and their lives in various countries, including America.

Happiness is referenced throughout the book. For example, Nabokov’s first unpublished novel was tentatively called Schastie, Happiness in 1921, and in the same year, when he was in Germany, he wrote in a letter to his mother, “I am infinitely happy, and so agitated and sad today.” On the morning in 1922 he wrote HAPPINESS on the fog of a train carriage window his father was assassinated later that day.

And of course, there is extensive reference to butterfly hunting, the pursuit that Nabokov called “his greatest happiness.” “The highest enjoyment of timelessness … is when I stand among rare butterflies … this is ecstasy, and behind this ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love.”

There are distractions too – such as nine pages on the author’s most loved Nabokov words: words that “dazzle and delight” – including concolorous, fritillary, and gloaming taken from his autobiography Speak, Memory; and heavenlogged taken from his book Lolita. Hence, this is not so much about Nabokov’s happiness, but of the author’s own.


While Zanganeh’s book has delightful and interesting chapters, it is neither a biography, nor a novel; it is neither a practical handbook on happiness, nor about happiness; and it is neither about Nabokov’s happy stories, nor a happy life. It is, as the author states in the beginning, “Alice-like variations” of aspects of happiness in Nabokov’s life. And like Alice, it is similar to a young girl falling down a rabbit hole into a world of fantasy and wonder populated by adventures and curious happenings.





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