We talked a lot about love and passion in the I am a reader sections. We talked about desires. Loving freely, living freely… We are on the side of love. Of course, we have no objection to passion. But this time, we are sailing into dangerous waters. We are now well accustomed to each other. As the I am a Reader clan, we can join hands and dive headfirst into a work with a sensitive subject but a very rich literature. Hold your breath, give your hand! Vladimir Nabokov invites us to that uncanny, disturbing, dark region. One tenth of the courage he showed while writing Lolita is enough for us. I think a good literary reader has that courage too. What do you think? Yes, Lolita is a disturbing book due to its subject matter. After all, our main character Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged intellectual who is interested in very young girls. Actually, it is not right to call him a young girl, let's be brave again, he is very interested in children. Young bodies that have not yet reached puberty. Yes, he is a pedophile. These are not just any girl, but the thin, elegant, attractive girls he calls his supergirls. In fact, as he calls them, little demons. In fact, according to his claim, he is looking for Annabel, whom he fell in love with in his youth and lost to typhus. The first fairy he could not reunite with. And he finds her in Lolita, especially in her. Thus, this relationship becomes a forbidden, inappropriate, dangerous obsession. This little girl, who Humbert Humbert falls in love with at first sight, is the only child of Charlotte Haze, the owner of a room he rents in a New England town in America. Humbert Humbert's interest in Lolita is so intense that he marries the landlady who is in love with her, even though he does not like her at all. Just so as not to be separated from this little girl. When Charlotte loses her life in a car accident, the old man and the little girl are left alone. Humbert Humbert also turns Lolita into the object of his lust and starts dragging her from hotel to hotel. Vladimir Nabokov writes Lolita in exactly five years. There comes a moment when he wants to burn what he has written. As you can see, diving into dark waters, trying to convey this to his reader by wandering through the convolutions of a sick mind, did not come easy to him either. But the author does not turn back from the path he set out on, partly with the support of his wife Vera. And one of the most debated texts in world literature emerges. Of course, he cannot find a publisher for himself in America, where he was living at the time. When he did not accept the pressures such as maybe if you change this, if you remove that, etc., it was first brought to light in 1955 by Olympia Press, which published mostly erotic and avant-garde works in France. This first edition did not receive much attention. However, when it was published in America in 1958 and in England only in 1959, after it was the subject of debate in parliament and he cleared himself, it caused a stir. Lolita went out of print from the very first day, and remained on the bestseller lists for months. Yes, we started with the story of the novel before the author. The minds of the audience who did not know Nabokov well enough must have been confused. The man is Russian, the novel takes place in America. Well, the author also lives there. The book is first published in France. In what language did this man write this novel? You may be asking questions like, what is Elin Russian doing in America, why France, etc. Wait, I can explain ???? Or rather, let's explain together... I have my dear writer friend Şebnem İşigüzel with me, who is a total Nabokov fan. Come save me Şebnem! #denizyücebaşarır #benokurum #lolita #şebnemişigüzel #vladimirnabokov