The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness - Hardcover

Lila Azam Zanganeh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393079929 ISBN 13: 9780393079920

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011

Synopsis

Discovering happiness in reading the work of an extraordinary writer. 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.

About this title

Review:

The author at times brilliantly captures Nabokov's calculated whimsy.... The recountings of conversations with Dmitri, for example, are both lovely and informative... There are moments of real beauty here. "

About the Author:

Lila Azam Zanganeh was born in Paris. She has taught literature, cinema, and Romance languages at Harvard University. She now writes and lives mainly in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393079929
• ISBN 13: 9780393079920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 228