#12 in Drama & theatre
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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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 90% of the weight and the score stays at 7.8 — the Drama & theatre average of 7.6 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 111 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 7.8 | 1.6K | 94% |
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“I would like to agree with ‘The Independent', whose favorable review is written on the cover - ‘A masterpiece. One of the greatest works of our age.' No review can do this book justice, as I am beginning to see. The ruminations of ‘Humbert Humbert', becoming more and more deranged as the pages fly by, is a chilling echo to the spiralling madness of the main character. I couldn't put this book down, and it is shameful to realize how most people would not touch this book with a ten foot pole, due to them getting the wrong notion of this book encouraging paedophilia. Read and make up your own min…”
“So this might be the hardest book for me to rate or to review in any intelligible manner. At some point, I was ready to give it a one-star rating not because of the despicable subject matter but because of how hard it made me work. (I found the French passages quite tedious in that they trip me up in my reading, as I constantly had to look up unfamiliar phrases on trusty old google.) Despite my annoyance with the over-the-top use of French, I admit that I was really drawn in by the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL writing. As many a reviewer have said before, Nabokov really could write the fuck out of a…”
Frequently asked
What is Lolita rated?
7.8 out of 10, from 1,714 reader ratings across 2 independent sources.
Is Lolita worth reading?
Readers give it 7.8/10 from 1,714 ratings, which puts it ahead of 80 % of the Drama & theatre shelf.
How long does it take to read Lolita?
About 6 hours at an average reading pace — 336 pages.
Where does Lolita rank?
#12 in Drama & theatre on the current snapshot.
How long is Lolita?
It has 336 pages — shorter than 64% of the ranked books in Drama & theatre.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Drama & theatre — and a score of 7.8, the closest to this book.
