Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Jul 2012 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine' Martin Amis, Observer

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A tortured soul or a monster? Humbert Humbert's fixation is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures. Filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, Lolita has lost none of its power to shock and awe.

'There's no funnier monster in literature than poor, doomed Humbert Humbert' Independent

Ratings and reviews

Okay, so first of all, Google Play, let me just point out that 99% of that "free sample" alone was the contents pages. If I had wanted to read several pages of listed numbers, I'd have read the yellow pages. Way to encourage people to pay £6.99 for a book that they could get for less than half the price on Amazon. Also, in no way is this a review of the book itself. See now, I couldn't possibly review the book seeing as I won't be buying it after being screwed over with that "free sample."

The book speaks powerfully, it is a masterpiece, something that never will be replaced.... The mix between English and French makes it difficult to read for some people.... but If I could give this book 5 stars I am sure you can too.

For years I've wanted to read this book by Nabokov. What a perfect feast of words...a guilty pleasure. Like thick, moist chocolate cake and smooth cream, it remains on your tongue and in the recesses of your brain long after you've devoured it

About the author

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.