Synopsis
Vladimir Nabokov's notorious, hilarious erotic murder mystery takes the form of a monologue by his hero, Humbert Humbert, as he attempts to justify his love for and obsession with the barely adolescent Dolores Haze, known as Lolita. Humbert's cross-country flight with his adored nymphet ends with her betrayal of him with his rival, the evil Quilty, who pursues Lolita not out of love but out of lust and selfishness, and who functions as a kind of double for the more pure-hearted (if perverse) Humbert. Some critics see Humbert (who, like Nabokov, was a European émigré) and Lolita (the quintessentially vulgar American) as personifications of the Old and New Worlds, one corrupting the other (but which?). One of the astonishing aspects of Nabokov's masterpiece is his dazzling command of English, including puns and wordplay worthy of Joyce. Another is the novel's famously checkered publishing history: LOLITA was rejected, banned, censored, and published underground, and it remained unpublished in the US until 1958.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1989-03-01 | | Series: | Vintage International Series | | Edition Description: | Reissue |
| Size | | Length: | 317 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokovs most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion 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.
The most controversial classic novel of the 20th century, Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is aroused to erotic desire only by a young girl.
Industry Reviews
"Lolita is a fine book, a distinguished book--all right then--a great book."
Esquire - Dorothy Parker
"It is a distinguished novel."
Graham Greene
"In recent fiction no lover has thought of his beloved with so much tenderness, no woman has been so lovingly evoked....It is one of the few examples of rapture in modern writing...."
Lionel Trilling
"Passions never burned so feverishly as in this, the great and perverse love story of our times."
Washington Post Book World - Michael Dirda (08/20/1995)
"Nabokov's elusiveness...is not just playful. Forever changing sides and withholding judgment, he has contrived to forestall both our outrage at his nasty hero and our contemptuous dismissal of his trivial, complicit Juliet. His irony is never patronizing or angry....For all its glittering distractions and diversions, this is a love story, after all--an unexpected grand romance, with a poignance and conviction that match anything in our old box of American valentines."
New Yorker - Roger Angell (08/25/1997)
"The first time I read LOLITA I thought it was one of the funniest books I'd ever come upon. (This was in the abbreviated version published in the 'Anchor Review' last year.) The second time I read it, uncut, I thought it was the saddest. I mention this personal reaction only because LOLITA is one of those occasional books which arrive swishing a long tail of opinion and reputation which can knock the unwary reader off his feet."
New York Times Book Review - Elizabeth Janeway (08/17/1958)
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