Lila Azam Zanganeh

the-enchanter

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Nabokov and Happiness

The Enchanter

A lucid and joyful account of the great master's art, written with all the playfulness that the subject deserves. Very delightful.

Nabokov claimed that 'originality' is a writer's only honesty. And Lila Azam Zanganeh's wonderful new book The Enchanter is a work of genuine and delightful originality. Her voice is intimate and alluring, and The Enchanter provokes a steady hum of joyousness in the reader's own mind. It is a timely reminder of why we read and write, and why now perhaps more than ever we need to connect to the world through Nabokov's enchanted 'third eye of imagination'.

There is a popular misconception that writers, in order to produce their best work, must be in the throes of personal torment. Nabokov wrote with joy, and his life, however difficult or tragic its circumstances may have been at times, was suffused with an underlying optimism. This happy stratum is often overlooked by those who seek the somber side of writing, yet the joy of creation, the playful nuances of life and art, are ever-present. Lila Azam Zanganeh's new book is about the joyous Nabokov who, in the words of Updike, "writes ecstatically." And Azam Zanganeh, a gifted writer, brings him to life in an elegant, personal, highly accessible style, without any attempt to mimic that of her beloved subject.

An Adventure in the Land of Nabokov

Plunging into the enchanted and luminous worlds of Speak, Memory, Ada, or Ardor; and the infamous Lolita, Lila Azam Zanganeh seeks out the Nabokovian experience of time, memory, sexual passion, nature, loss, love in all its forms, language in all its allusions. She explores his Russian childhood, his European sojourns, the landscapes of 'his' America, hallucinates an interview and seeks the 'crunch of happiness' in Vladimir Nabokov's singular vocabulary. This rhapsodic and beautifully illuminated book, which includes such fans as Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk, will lure the innocent reader to a well of delights.

Lila Azam Zanganeh was born in Paris to Iranian parents. Her family returned to Tehran but were forced to flee from the Islamic revolution when she was still a baby. She grew up in Paris and moved to the United States at the age of 22 to teach literature, cinema and Romance languages at Harvard University. In 2006, she edited a book of essays about cultural life in contemporary Iran: My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes, which was translated in several languages and won two prizes.

The Enchanter

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Lila Azam Zanganeh

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