ABSTRACT
The fiction of Ural writer Aleksei Ivanov endows local landscapes with supernatural elements, creating for his readers “enchanted geographies.” This chapter mobilizes Jane Bennett’s theory of enchantment to explore and theorize Ivanov’s geographies as they are represented in three bestselling novels. The chapter then turns to Ivanov’s many extra-fictional projects – from essays, to a festival based on one of his novels, to tourist development in the region – in order to show how the author redirects the energies of enchantment toward a specific conception of regional identity.
