I read Lolita and it had grossed me out but the sheer poetic brilliance and lyrical quality of the prose bowled me over. I keep saying this when a discussion of Lolita crops up, "It takes genius to make gross sound flowery and a criminal sound like just another human being with flaws he could never overcome."

The Enchanter is a pre-Lolita. Nabokov wrote this and later while re-reading it, found it quite mediocre and lucid as far as the language goes. His son Dmitri, posthumously, translated this (Originally written in Russian) and published it.

I tend to agree with Nabokov when he says that this work is lucid as compared to Lolita. Lolita was a work of art. The Enchanter is more a story narrated in the most usual way in some places, and sets another linguistic bar in certain others. The narrators (both Hebephiles) and their emotions in both the books also differ morally. Without giving away too much, the narrator of The Enchanter is less monstrous perhaps than Humbert Humbert, if monstrosity HAS to be compared. Nabokov has his way with words and metaphors, and the narration takes its own life after the first few pages. In his typical style, Nabokov animates the lifelessness of objects around the place and brings up the nuances of the story through little observant details of the surroundings. The moral ambiguities of the protagonist and his subsequent effort to achieve his nasty goals are carefully worded as if to cushion the impact of the horrifying mental abilities.

For a Nabokov fan, this novella is like a short window to the author's mind before he penned his masterpiece.