The Enchanter (1939) was one of the last works Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Russian, using his original pen name of V. Sirin. It was composed in Paris, at a time when he had just started to create works in English – the third of his childhood languages (the two others being his native Russian, and French which was the lingua franca of the Russian aristocracy). Following his arrival in America the manuscript appeared to have been lost, but it surfaced again in 1959 and was first published in English translation in 1987, ten years after the author’s death.