"Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution" - Vladimir Nabokov
Book Details
Title: The Enchanter
Tag-line: 'A little masterpiece' - Martin Amis
Genre/Category: Fiction
Type: Novelette
Authour: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 0-330-30070-9
Reading Details
Started Reading: 18th November 2008
Finished Reading: 19th November 2008
Comments
Quite a gap for me between putting down one book and picking up another, for various reasons I haven't read for a week or two. That's not to say that I haven't listened to an awful lot of factual and fiction podcasts. Still, it was good to find a book that gripped me and made me want to read it again, albeit a very short one.
This book, I gather, was once lost and then found again, so perhaps it is not as well known as it would have been. Also, it is a precursor to Nabokov's famous Lolita which will always overshadow this shorter work, translated from the Russian by Vladimir's son, Dmitri.
The writing is superb, there is a fascinating attention to detail and the descriptions are vivid. It was interesting for me to see how Nabokov wrote a protagonist who is definitely not a hero, nor morally good in any way whatsoever, but whom I was still fascinated by right up to the fantastic climax, when his world just falls apart over a matter of minutes. There is such vivid imagery at the end, I could almost see it.
