The Life and Times of Nabokov

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Nabokov is Russian but only sort of like he's not like right what tell me. He moved around a lot in life I guess like from country to country. His family first did that when he left Russia for for Berlin on the heels of the Bolshevik revolution. And actually his his dad was killed his dad who is a who's a politician and a prominent figure in his own right was killed defending somewhat from an assassination attempt.

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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