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Lolita Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.
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. With an introduction by Martin Amis.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
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"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."
— Atlantic Monthly
Quotes
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The only convincing love story of our century.
— Vanity Fair -
Intensely lyrical and wildly funny.
— Time -
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 -
Lolita is an authentic work of art which compels our immediate response and serious reflection–a revealing and indispensable comedy of horrors.
— San Francisco Chronicle
Awards
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One of Time Magazine's Best 100 English-Language Novels from 1923–2005
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About Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1889–1977) was one of the most prolific writers and literary critics of the twentieth century. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, he grew up in a trilingual household and later studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym “Sirin” and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940 when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland.
About Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons is one of fewer than a dozen actors to have won the Triple Crown of Acting: an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony award, with a Golden Globe thrown in for good measure. His distinctive, haunting voice has seen him cast as the villain in many a movie, though his abundant work in both film and theater has garnered him many leading roles as well. Among his many film credits are Kingdom of Heaven, Being Julia, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Lion King, and Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance.