Reason for banning: Nabokov's short novel has been banned in France, Argentina,

New Zealand, England and South Africa for the sexual relationship between the 37-
year-old narrator and his 12-year-old stepdaughter.

Classic sentence

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a
trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

It’s almost scary how easy it is to symphatize with Humbert.

Perverse, beautiful and touching.

How ‘Lolita’ Escaped Obscenity Laws and Cancel Culture

It had been initially rejected by all the big publishing houses in

the United States, so Nabokov resorted to the pornographic
French publisher Olympia Press, only to have it banned in
France and also in Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa and
Australia. In England, all copies were seized by customs from
1955 until 1959, when it was finally published to huge
consternation and controversy.
no criminal case was ever brought against “Lolita,” which is
surprising given that it appeared in the world at a time when
literature was far from safe from the clutches of the obscenity
laws, and given that it’s still the most shocking, sensational
thing you’ve ever read.
Dan Franklin, who published Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie
at Jonathan Cape, has speculated on the subject too: “I wouldn’t
publish ‘Lolita.’ What’s different today is #MeToo and social
media
“Lolita” makes us see with the eyes of a man who is a pedophile,
a rapist and a murderer, and that’s I think the essential reason
it’s escaped the harsher accusations of both the courts and the
moral police in the 60 years since it’s been published.
While it doesn’t apologize for Humbert’s vile transgressions, neither does it romanticize them
— although Humbert himself is ridiculously romantic at times. The author forces his reader to
confront, on every page, the monstrous nature of his protagonist. There is no escaping his
awfulness, but we get inside his head and his heart. We end up not only empathizing with but
also loving a murderer and the rapist of a young girl.

“Lolita” remains unassailable because it disarms you and transcends judgment. The experience
of reading it, if you do actually read it, is to relinquish concern with right and wrong and just to
feel things as another person feels them.

The use of humor for aesthetic effect is a central feature of Humbert’s narrative and this
aesthetic revelry is central to the character and how audiences relate to him. - helsinki

Appel, A. (1967). “Lolita”: The Springboard of Parody. Wisconsin Studies in

Contemporary Literature, 8(2), 204. https://doi.org/10.2307/1207102

Tamir-Ghez, N. (1979). The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov’s Lolita. Poetics Today,

1(1/2), 65. https://doi.org/10.2307/1772041

How ‘Lolita’ Escaped Obscenity Laws and Cancel Culture - The New York Times. (sem
data). Obtido 16 de Dezembro de 2022, de
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/books/review/lolita-obscenity-cancel-
culture-emily-mortimer.html