The Nymphet

Tue, 08/17/2010 - 7:05pm by marshd

On August 18th, 1958, Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita was first published in the U.S. That makes tomorrow its 52nd anniversary.

The book is his best known, and was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again by Adrian Lyne in 1997. Unlike many of his other works, Nabokov actually wrote Lolita in English, and then translated into Russian. It was--and probably still is--controversial; the story is narrated by a man named Humbert Humbert, who has an amorous obsession with his girlfriend's 12-year-old daughter.

Author Erica Jong, in a New York Times Book Review in 1988, said, "'Lolita' teems with loving lexicography, crystalline coinages, lavish list-making - all the symptoms of rapture of the word. ' Nymphet' was a coinage of this novel, as were the more obscure 'libidream,' 'pederosis,' 'nymphage' and 'puppybodies.'"

Here at AADL we have Lolita in not only its original English, but also in Spanish, French, and Russian. We also have an audiobook version read by film great Jeremy Irons, who actually played Humbert in the 1997 film.