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Lolita  By  cover art

Lolita

By: Vladimir Nabokov
Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
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Publisher's summary

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'

LOLITA is the story of Humbert Humbert, poet and pervert, and his obsession with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze. Determined to possess his 'Lolita' both carnally and artistically, Humbert embarks on a disastrous courtship that can only end in tragedy.

Initially, Nabokov was unable to find an American publisher willing to take the book on. It was finally published in Paris in 1954 but its notoriety spread quickly. Graham Green, in an interview in THE TIMES later that year, called it 'one of the best books of 1954'. When G.P. Putnam's Sons published in the US in 1958, it was a bestseller; the first book since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication.

©1955 Vladimir Nabokov (P)2005 Random House Audio

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Disturbingly Wonderful

Dear reader, listening to this audiobook version of Lolita was a fascinating experience: beautiful and poisonous, loving and loathing, sad and funny, sublime and debased, pure and rotten, refined and vulgar, European and American. The premise, a middle-aged man who is a connoisseur of "nymphets" (pre-pubescent girls with a seemingly "demoniac" and "soul-shattering charm") becomes the step-father of one, may shock or repulse. But Nabokov is unsettlingly effective at making us sympathize with his first-person narrator, Humbert Humbert. The novel is also interesting for being comprised of skewed pieces of various genres: buddy-road-adventure, romance, erotic, metafiction, tragedy, and European critique of America.

There is some French in the novel, but usually the context implies what Humbert is saying.

Jeremy Irons expresses his thorough understanding of Nabokov's novel throughout his reading of it. From the opening foreword by the outrageously pedantic American Dr. John Ray, Jr., followed immediately by the creepy sensual beauty of the opening lines of Humbert's story ("Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta" etc.), Irons' voice helps to seduce the reader more and more into Humbert's head and heart and world than the text does alone. He really becomes Humbert in his various moods, including poetic ecstasy, peevish anger, guilty despair, surreal delirium, and philosophic acceptance. It was a pleasure to hear him speaking in Lolita's vulgar American pre-teen voice one moment and in Humbert's world-weary European aesthete's the next. He also does a fine job with the other supporting characters, like Clare Quilty the amoral and successful playwright who speaks a debauched and effeminate American English that simulates by turns movie gangsters, British upper crusts, or French intellectuals.

Well worth listening to.

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6 people found this helpful

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Consumate performance of this wonderful book

Jeremy Irons gives a perfect performance as Humbert Humbert (the narrator & fictional author of the story). His tone creates exactly the right amount of compulsion to listen while remaining a repellent character. If you know you want to read Lolita then this is the version you want.

As for the story, the way Nabokov brings the reader in as co-conspirator is both attractive & repellent. If we do not read Humbert's book, his crimes are not witnessed - possibly never committed. As reader we are complicit in every aspect of his crimes.

It's an incredible tale & we are invited right into Humbert's mind, where we are manipulated much the same way he manipulates everyone else around him.

The prose is remarkable. It is possible that Humbert is the most detested fictional character in the world while his story of "Lolita" is one of the finest stories ever written.

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Nope

As a father of a 10year old I could not continue with this book. Sometimes you just need to put it down

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Captivating performance.

Jeremy Irons brings this book to life. Amazing performance that had me totally emersed in the story.

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Perfect

Perfect! Nabokov a giant in literature. Great performance by the reader. Captivating story and engaging language it is worth your time.

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Spellbinding

One of the best books I have ever read. Remarkable prose, coupled with the inimitable voice of Irons make this a sensual delight as much as a thought provoking masterpiece.

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An amazing work of a genius

The best written novel in English language, period. A true privilege to have read this book!

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Dazzling. One of the few true masterpieces of literature.

Lolita deserves multiple readings, and I say ‘readings’ because after you listen to this masterful, pitch-perfect performance by Jeremy Irons, you’ll want to marvel at Nabokov’s spellbinding words on the printed page, and you’ll see how much you missed. It’ll be like reading the book for the first time. I highly recommend The Annotated Lolita, which reveals so many more layers to this intricately crafted tale. Lolita is tragedy, parody, laugh out loud comedy, a marvelous road trip, a massive word game, and one of the most moving love stories of all time. I can’t recommend any book more highly than Lolita.

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I tried not to sympathise, I really did.

First of all, Jeremy Iron’s performance is devilishly brilliant. I cannot imagine that anyone could have done a better job. It was like watching the movie, but better. His voice and diction were part of what made you want to listen and care for this troubled character.

Phenomenal storytelling. Without giving the plot away, I want to say that the brilliance of this novel is the way beauty and ugliness, humour and sadness, tenderness and violence, exist in an inexplicable harmony. Nabokov’s words appear to bounce off this novel like a poem. Almost like you can see them dancing along, whirling and hypnotising, to a strange song that you fixate on and feel it’s rhythm.

This novel is a mushroom cloud: so beautiful and destructive. And it is nothing but sheer terror, but you can’t look away.

I managed to keep a clear head about the character, and I succeeded, right up until the final minutes of the book, where a pang of the deepest sadness, his sadness, that Gad need slowly building up over the course of this novel, overtook me.

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Find yourself inside an utterly different mind

This book puts you inside a mind which is completely foreign to your own and at odds with society. It manages the interior of that mind so that it makes sense within its own walls. And it manages the boundary between these two worlds so that that perverse world can sustain itself. That is quite an accomplishment on its own. But it's also beautifully written.

The narration is excellent in my opinion. Could be a bit too flat for some but I think it's a deliberate and good choice. It renders the abhorrent unremarkable.

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