The Enchanter is a short, disturbing novella that anticipates themes later developed in Lolita. It centers on an unnamed middle-aged man obsessively attracted to a young girl. To gain access to her, he marries her ailing mother, whose death soon leaves him alone with the child. The narrative follows the man’s obsessive fantasies and moral self-deception, rendered in a stark, unsentimental style.

Unlike Lolita, the novella offers little linguistic playfulness or irony to soften its subject, resulting in a bleak and psychologically intense work. Nabokov later distanced himself from the text, yet it remains significant as a precursor to his exploration of obsession, manipulation, and the unreliable justifications of desire.