Lolita

What it is about

Nabokov’s novel is narrated by Humbert Humbert, whose dazzling verbal control attempts to aestheticize, excuse, and conceal his abuse of Dolores Haze. The book makes reading itself ethically difficult: its beauty is real, its narrator is unreliable, and the harmed child must be reconstructed from the gaps and distortions in his performance. I need this book close whenever I start thinking the question has become simple.

Why I keep it

The most beautiful sentences ever spent on the worst thing.

Key ideas

Beside it on the shelf · Literature & Fiction