The enchanter - Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

'As I explained in my essay appended to Lolita, I had written a kind of pre-Lolita novel in the autumn of 1939 in Paris. I was sure I had destroyed it long ago but today . . . a single copy of the story turned up.' Vladimir Nabokov, 1959

The magical prose of this long-lost novel constitutes the 'first little throb' of a fascination with tormented compulsion that Nabokov developed further in Lolita. The dark corners of the soul are laid bare when, in order to satisfy his erotic obsession with a pre-pubescent girl, a middle-aged jeweller marries her ailing widowed mother, whose death soon after leaves him sole guardian of the shyly innocent character.

'You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent. You read The Enchanter on the edge of your seat, squirming with fearful admiration and constant resistance' Martin Amis

'The Enchanter is so disturbing; and all the more so because of its glamour as literature. It's not only a feat of empathy: it's a short, sustained burst of dazzling writing' Victoria Glendinning

'Nowhere is the expression less than elegant and the translation reads like an original' Angela Carter

'It is, no question at all, a minor masterpiece' Selina Hastings