Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov 1955

Devastation Rating

Existential Dread
trauma literary fiction injustice philosophical

Our Take

The most beautiful prose in service of the most monstrous narrator. Humbert Humbert is eloquent and utterly without accountability, and Nabokov never lets you forget who is missing from this account. Dolores Haze is a ghost in her own story. The novel knows this. That is its moral seriousness.

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