#169 in Classics
Lolita
- 336
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
- Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
- 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction
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Our view
The whole novel is told by Humbert Humbert, and its difficulty lies in how well he tells it: the prose is seductive enough that the reader must keep resisting his own version of what he does to a twelve-year-old girl. That tension is the book’s achievement, not an endorsement. Some readers also find the frequent French phrases hard work. For readers prepared to spend time inside a repellent mind.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by the Russian and American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession with and victimization of a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he describes as a "nymphet". Humbert becomes sexually obsessed with Dolores after becoming her stepfather, and romanticizes his obsession. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish diminutive for Dolores. The novel was written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 1,714 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 92% of the weight and the score stays at 7.8 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 111 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 7.8 | 1.6K | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is Lolita?
It has 336 pages — longer than 71% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Classics — and a score of 7.8, the closest to this book.
