Lolita
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4.3 • 37 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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. • With a new introduction by Claire Messud
“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.
Customer Reviews
Challenging
Me, an Inuk, reading how humbert finds Inuit ugly and smelly 👁️ 👄 👁️
Man humbert stinks! And he’s so unbearable and unlikable. But Nabokov’s intentionally crafted beautiful prose hypnotizes you. I think the passage quoted in Lolita sums it up: “The moral sense in mortals is the duty. We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty,”
Beautiful prose to hypnotize and manipulate you into glazing over the ugly truths hidden between the lines that demonstrate what it feels like to be preyed upon. How predators manipulate.
I will say that Nabokov does balance well between blatant truth and hidden truths. There are plenty times in the novel that humbert states when is aware of his illegal predatory behavior. But often tries to diminish his violent predatory actions through disarming prose, and long unbearable rants and vents.
For this novel to be so widely misinterpreted and tabooed is unfortunate. But I’ll admit finishing it felt bittersweet as the stylistic prose is brilliant but the theme and narrator makes for a challenging read.