Lolita (Penguin Classics)

by Craig Raine (Afterword), Craig Raine (Afterword), Vladimir Nabokov (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $11.62

  One of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a strange, troubling love story told by the one of the most unreliable narrators in literature. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an afterword by Craig Raine. Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction 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 starring James Mason and Peter Sellers, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne starring Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith, Lolita has lost none of its power to shock and awe. 'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine ...You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent' Martin Amis, Observer

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $5.07

  In this Readers' Guide, Christine Clegg examines the critical history of Lolita through a broad range of interpretations. Although early criticism of the text polarized around 'that' question - is it literature or pornography? - the influence of American critics such as Lionel Trilling quickly secured canonical status for the novel. A compelling aspect of Lolita criticism is the way in which that question continues to return in different forms. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lolita has been the subject of diverse critical attention, beyond 'Nabokov Studies': from Richard Rorty's philosophical inquiry into the ethics of cruelty, to Rachel Bowlby's feminist analysis of the rhetoric of consumer culture in the novel. All of the main critical approaches to the novel are covered by this indispensable sourcebook.

• New

  Paperback
  1990

  $17.77

• New

  Hardcover
  1999

  $24.64