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Lolita

Introduction by Martin Amis

By Vladimir Nabokov

By Vladimir Nabokov

By Vladimir Nabokov

By Vladimir Nabokov

By Vladimir Nabokov
Introduction by Martin Amis

By Vladimir Nabokov
Introduction by Martin Amis

By Vladimir Nabokov

By Vladimir Nabokov

By Vladimir Nabokov
Read by Jeremy Irons

By Vladimir Nabokov
Read by Jeremy Irons

Best Seller

Part of Vintage International

Part of Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series

Part of Vintage International

Paperback $17.00

Mar 13, 1989 | ISBN 9780679723165

Paperback $17.00

Nov 10, 2009 | ISBN 9780307474674

Hardcover $28.00

Mar 09, 1993 | ISBN 9780679410430

Ebook $12.99

Aug 24, 2010 | ISBN 9780307744029

Audiobook Download $14.98

Sep 20, 2005 | 689 Minutes

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    Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
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      Mar 13, 1989 | ISBN 9780679723165

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    • Paperback $17.00

      Nov 10, 2009 | ISBN 9780307474674

      Buy from Other Retailers:

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    • Hardcover $28.00

      Mar 09, 1993 | ISBN 9780679410430

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    About Lolita

    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

    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.

    About Lolita

    Lolita, la más famosa y controversial novela de Vladimir Nabokov, cuenta la historia de la obsesión devoradora del cuarentón Humbert Humbert por la nínfula Dolores Haze. Ternura y fascinación —además de tristeza y un humor mordaz— llenan sus páginas pero es, por encima de todo, una meditación sobre el amor—el amor como abuso y alucinación, locura y transformación.

    About Lolita

    Nabokov’s wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as a classic not to the controversy its subject matter aroused but to its author’s use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. With an introduction by Martin Amis.

    When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account 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, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

    Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author’s life and times.

    About Lolita

    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

    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.

    About Lolita

    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

    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.

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    Listen to a sample from Lolita

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    About Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957),… More about Vladimir Nabokov

    About Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957),… More about Vladimir Nabokov

    About Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957),… More about Vladimir Nabokov

    About Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957),… More about Vladimir Nabokov

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $17.00
    Published by Vintage
    Mar 13, 1989 | 336 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780679723165

    Category: Spanish Language Fiction

    Paperback | $17.00
    Published by Vintage Espanol
    Nov 10, 2009 | 400 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780307474674

    Category: Literary Fiction | Fiction Classics

    Hardcover | $28.00
    Published by Everyman’s Library
    Mar 09, 1993 | 368 Pages | 5 x 8 | ISBN 9780679410430

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $12.99
    Published by Vintage
    Aug 24, 2010 | 336 Pages | ISBN 9780307744029

    Category: Literary Fiction | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $14.98
    Published by Random House Audio
    Sep 20, 2005 | 689 Minutes | ISBN 9780739333211
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    Praise

    One of TIME Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels

    “Lolita blazes with a perversity of a most original kind. For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material hundred-proof intellectual farce…Lolita seems an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy.” —The Atlantic Monthly

    “Intensely lyrical and wildly funny.” —Time

    “The only convincing love story of our century.” —Vanity Fair

    “The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind, in which vice or folly is regarded not so much with scorn as with profound dismay and a measure of tragic sympathy…The reciprocal flow of irony gives to both the characters and their surroundings the peculiar intensity of significance that attends the highest art.” —The New Yorker

    “A revealing and indispensable comedy of horrors.” —San Francisco Chronicle

    Awards

    Audie Awards WINNER 1998

    Author Essay

    Like the sweat of lust and guilt, the sweat of death trickles through Lolita. I wonder how many readers survive the novel without realizing that its heroine is, so to speak, dead on arrival, like her child. Their brief obituaries, school-newsletter form:

    ‘Mona Dahl’ s a student in Paris. ‘Rita’ has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. ‘Richard F. Schiller’ died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography

    Then, once the book begins, Humbert’s childhood love Annabel dies, at thirteen (typhus) and his first wife Valeria dies (also in childbirth), and his second wife Charlotte dies (‘a bad accident’ – though of course this death is structural), and Charlottes’ friend Jean Farlow dies at thirty-three (cancer), and Lolita’s young seducer Charlie Homes dies (Korea), and her old seducer Quilty dies (murder: another structural exit). And then Humbert dies (coronary thrombosis). And then Lolita dies. And her daughter dies. In a sense Lolita is too great for its own good. It rushes up on the reader like a recreational drug more powerful than any yet discovered or devised. In common with its narrator, it is both irresistible and unforgivable. And yet it all works out. I shall point the way to what I take to be its livid and juddering heart – which is itself in pre-thrombotic turmoil, all heaves and lifts and thrills.

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