The Two Lolitas -

Michael Maar

Verso

2017

128 páginas

4h 16m

ISBN-13: 9781786631855

A leading German scholar reveals the secret history of Nabokov's infamous novel.

Does it ring a bell? The first-person narrator, a cultivated man of middle age, looks back on the story of an amour fou. It all starts when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a pre-teen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator marked by her forever remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.

In this extraordinary literary detective story, Michael Maar casts new light on the making of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.