The Enchanter

Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world; in an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for “gnostical turpitude.”

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72531-2

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE

Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing store, is ruddy, self-satisfied, and masculine, but repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72340-0

LOLITA

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous and controversial novel, tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72316-5

LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS!

Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899). Focusing on the central figures of his life, the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life’s work and his life itself.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72728-6

THE LUZHIN DEFENSE

As a young boy, Luzhin is unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen—an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge, and rises to the rank of grandmaster, but at a cost: in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72722-4

PALE FIRE

Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreward and commentary by Shade’s self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72342-4

PNIN

Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72341-7

THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT

Many knew of Sebastian Knight, distinguished novelist, but few knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career. After Knight’s death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with clues found in the novelist’s private papers.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72726-2

SPEAK, MEMORY

Speak, Memory is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works.

Autobiography/Literature/978-0-679-72339-4

ALSO AVAILABLE

The Annotated Lolita, 978-0-679-72729-3

Laughter in the Dark, 978-0-679-72450-6

Lolita: A Screenplay, 978-0-679-77255-2

Mary, 978-0-679-72620-3

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, 978-0-679-72997-6

Strong Opinions, 978-0-679-72609-8

Transparent Things, 978-0-679-72541-1

VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL

Available at your local bookstore, or visit

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Copyright

First Vintage International Edition, July 1991

Copyright © 1986 by Dmitri Nabokov

Author’s Note One copyright © 1957 by Vladimir Nabokov

Author’s Note Two copyright © 1986 by Article 3C Trust under the Will of Vladimir Nabokov

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, in 1986.

The Enchanter is translated from Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished work entitled Volshebnik. Copyrights in Volshebnik are held by Dmitri Nabokov as trustee of Article 3C Trust under the Will of Vladimir Nabokov. This edition published by arrangement with the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899–1977.

[Volshebnik. English]

The enchanter / Vladimir Nabokov ; translated by Dmitri Nabokov.

p. cm. —(Vintage international)

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Putnam, c1986.

Translation of: Volshebnik.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78730-9

I. Title.

PG3476.N3V5513 1991

891.73?42—dc20 90-55704

Cover art by Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah

Cover photograph by Alison Gootee

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Notes

1

1. Excerpt from “On a Book Entitled Lolita” originally published in French in L’Affaire Lolita, Paris, Olympia, 1957, and subsequently appended to the novel.