The Story of Lolita and Humbert

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Lolita escapes Humbert who up to this point has been kind of keeping her under his control by basically threatening to put her in a foster home. He spends a couple years searching for her and just can't find her until he gets a letter from her she's 17, married to some army guy who lost his hearing at least in the in World War II.

Usually books try to make you root for the protagonist. Even if he or she is flawed in some crucial way, most stories try to make you feel something for the person whose mind you're inhabiting. That is not the case in Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita.

This week we share with you an uncomfortable discussion about how it feels to read a book told from the perspective of an unrepentant pedophile—how do you feel about him? How do we feel about him? How does he feel about him? The difficult subject matter is just one of the things that has earned Lolita its place in the literary canon.

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