Reviews of The Enchanter

"The Enchanter is, in its subtle, light-spirited way, a triumph, a work that manages to say interesting things about Nabokov while remaining faithful to its own artistic spirit … But be warned—it's like nothing you've read before."
- William Skidelsky, The Guardian  |  Read Full Review »

"Her own prose is just as limpid and bevelled as the work of the Enchanter himself."
- Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman  |  Read Full Review »

"It is a contagion of happiness, a landscape of luminous discovery. Facts, words, characters, style, invention—she writes in flashes, like a camera lens opening and closing … At times, one feels helpless and transported, led by the hand (two hands—Azam Zanganeh's and Nabokov's) to a very strange and glittering place."
- Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times  |  Read Full Review »

"Think of The Enchanter as a delightful tumble into a Nabokovian rabbit hole, and Azam Zanganeh’s manic passion will be hard to resist."
- Carmela Ciuraru, The Boston Globe  |  Read Full Review »

" 'Happiness writes white—it doesn't show up on the page,' said Henri de Montherlant. This is an aphorism that sounds true but isn't, and the work of Vladimir Nakokov, as Lila Azam Zanganeh so lightly and elegantly shows us, is its great disproof. Her book is a joyful response to the joy that inspired all of Nabokov's art. Flitting here and there like the great man's beloved butterflies, it delightfully succeeds in netting the butterfly hunter."
- Salman Rushdie, winner of the Man Booker Prize

"A lucid and joyful account of the great writer's art, written with all the playfulness that the subject deserves. Very delightful."
- Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

The Enchanter, Inside Cover

The protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov's The Gift playfully dreamed of writing "a practical handbook: How to Be Happy." Now, Nabokov's own imaginative reader Lila Azam Zanganeh lends life to this vision with sophistication and charm as she shares the joy to be found in reading Nabokov.

Plunging into the enchanted and luminous worlds of Speak, Memory; Ada, or Ador; and the infamous Lolita, Azam Zanganeh enlightens us to the bliss of Nabokov, painting him as the "great writer of happiness." She leads us on a kaleidoscopic journey through the Nabokovian experience of time, memory, sexual passion, nature, loss, love in all its forms, and language in all its allusions. She explores Nabokov's geography—from his Russian childhood to the landscapes of "his" America—suffers encounters with his beloved "nature," hallucinates an interview with the master, and seeks the "crunch of happiness" in his singular vocabulary.

Following the tracks of the notorious butterfly hunter, Azam Zanganeh's literary sleuthing turns up splendid surprises. The result is a beautiful illuminated book that will both reignite the passion of experienced Nabokovians and lure the innocent reader to a well of delights as yet unseen.