Lolita

· Sold by Vintage
4.4
439 reviews
Ebook
336
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.

“The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind.”The New Yorker

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.

Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Ratings and reviews

4.4
439 reviews
A Google user
January 14, 2011
The only reason I was reading this book was because someone picked it for this month's read in my book club. Needless to say, I will not be attending this month's meeting. I can come up with much better ways to spend what little free time I have reading this poor excuse for a book. I have no desire to read the sick and twisted obsessions of an man wanting a 12-year old girl. The book was hard to follow and I honestly felt repulsed the entire 42 pages I unfortunately did read. I guess I'm just not a literary snob that gets engrossed in this kind of useless crap...just a mere person that likes to read books for entertainment over watching the tube.
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Koibito (Baby Cakes)
June 28, 2021
A visceral experience of...I don't have Nabokov's words nor style to write some beautiful review here, especially a captivating intro sentence. I read this to further understand My Dark Vanessa, a book that one can think of as an inverse of this book. The prose is undoubtedly beautiful and as My Dark Vanessa itself states, you'll appreciate the prose if not the plot. I chose this as homework for the aforementioned "inverse" (it's far more than that, I assure ye) and as a rite of passage to test my endurance. I guess it's high, then. And, in a way, I read this to understand my own abuse. I didn't go through what Dolores went through but this book has genuinely helped me to further come to terms with my abuse.
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A Google user
July 20, 2011
The second time I read this book, I enjoyed it even more than the first time. It is at times deeply disturbing, blackly humorous and sometimes even tragic. The protagonist is always desperately trying to cling to something fleeting, something he can never truly have and it has quite a tragic effect on his and others lives. The criticisms I have is that parts of the book are quite long and drawn out, also it would have been interesting to have been able to hear Lolita's perspective on things.
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About the author

VLADIMIR NABOKOV was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899. After studying French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, he launched his literary career in Berlin and Paris. In 1940 he moved to the United States, here he achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. Lolita, arguably his most famous novel, was first published, by the Olympia Press, Paris, on September 15, 1955, and became a controversial success. Nabokov died in Montreux Switzerland in 1977.

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