The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness

The protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov's The Gift playfully dreamed of writing "A Practical Handbook: How to Be Happy." Now, Nabokov's own creative reader Lila Azam Zanganeh lends life to this vision with sly sophistication and ebullient charm, as she shares the delirious joy to be found in reading the masterpieces of "the great writer of happiness."

Plunging into the enchanted and luminous worlds of Speak, Memory; Ada, or Ardor; and the infamous Lolita, Azam Zanganeh seeks out 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. This beautifully illuminated book will both reignite the passion of experienced Nabokovians and lure the innocent reader to a well of delights as yet unseen.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 05/02/2011
ISBN: 9780393079920
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.60w x 1.10d

Review Citations: Library Journal 05/15/2011 pg. 85
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2011
New Yorker (The) 06/27/2011 pg. 81
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2011 pg. 176