Wizard

This edition comprises the last two major works of Vladimir Nabokov's European period, written in Paris before his departure to America in 1940. Both had a decisive influence on all of the writer's subsequent English-language work. The story "The Enchanter" (1939) is Nabokov's first attempt to explore the theme of "Lolita", and the novel "Solus Rex" (1940) approaches the concept of "Pale Fire". Regretting the incompleteness of "Solus Rex", Nabokov noted that "in its color, stylistic scope and richness, and something indefinable in its powerful deep current, it promised to be decidedly different from all my other Russian works." The Appendix publishes an excerpt from the archival typewritten text of "Solus Rex", excluded from the Paris journal publication.