The Origins of Nabokov

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In 1940 he left Europe for America. His brother Sergei actually died in a concentration camp in 1945. He was mostly a writer and a teacher among his students were Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thomas Pinchon. The last unfinished novel called the original of Laura was just published in 2009 in its entirety. It had been given to his son and his wife in as like a series of no cards and scholars were allowed to see it but yeah in its entirety it was only published a few years ago.

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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