Reader’s Guide to Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Voyage Out Book Group’s Reader’s Guide to Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Vintage

317 pages

9582701048

 Region:

The “Great American Novel”

Other Books From Region:

Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping

Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born sometime around April 23, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The oldest of five, he grew up wealthy, moving between St. Petersburg, and an estate fifty miles to the south in the countryside. He enjoyed tennis and soccer, and chasing and collecting butterflies.

Nabokov’s Russian adolescence was under the rule of Nicholas II. The Nabokovs were at piece with the czar’s regime, though Nabokov’s father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a famous and controversial liberal politician. He was imprisoned in 1908 for ninety days for his involvement in a political manifesto.

Meanwhile, Nabokov’s mother, Elena Ivanova, raised the three boys and two girls in aristocratic fashion, using…