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Lolita

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Lolita

By: Vladimir Nabokov
Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
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About this listen

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.'

LOLITA is the story of Humbert Humbert, poet and pervert, and his obsession with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze. Determined to possess his 'Lolita' both carnally and artistically, Humbert embarks on a disastrous courtship that can only end in tragedy.

Initially, Nabokov was unable to find an American publisher willing to take the book on. It was finally published in Paris in 1954 but its notoriety spread quickly. Graham Green, in an interview in THE TIMES later that year, called it 'one of the best books of 1954'. When G.P. Putnam's Sons published in the US in 1958, it was a bestseller; the first book since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication.

©1955 Vladimir Nabokov (P)2005 Random House Audio Classics Fiction Heartfelt Scary Thought-Provoking Witty

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All stars
Most relevant  
This audio book is the perfect demonstration of the additional quality a narrator brings to the text, it is a performance that I would suggest is one of the finest I have had the good fortune to listen to, it enhances the book to such a degree that it is almost unimaginable to contemplate it in any other form, as to the book , there is a reason why it is constantly in the top 10 novels of the twentith century and though the subject matter was the cause of much controversy it is without doubt a seminal work of modern fiction.

superb performance from Jeremy Irons

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The prose of this book is wonderful, but still, it makes for difficult listening at times, understandably. Jeremy Irons is exceptional in this performance... beautifully, skin-crawlingly judged.

Beautifully captured depravity

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Jeremy Irons will be immortalised through the telling of this storey. He alone was made to play HH

Bitter sweat, unforgettable and tragic

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This novel has been the centre of my PhD thesis, Masters and Undergraduate degree. Jeremy Irons is exquisite as H.H, and portrays him exactly as Nabokov intended purely through his voice. Amazing work.

Jeremy Irons, the man that you are.

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Jeremy Irons could read information about being stuck in traffic and I'd still be entranced by his lovely voice

Jeremy Irons Amazing

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Jeremy Irons narrates this splendidly, lending the protagonist the kind of voice I had imagined for years.

Nicely narrated

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I came to Lolita via the film first, and when I saw that Jeremy Irons was narrating the book, I bought it in a heartbeat. I knew it to be a skillfully crafted tale and I've not been let down, and it is lifted off the page by Irons' silky delivery (though the American accents leave a little to be desired - I can forgive that for the craftsmanship of the rest). Despite all this, though, I find that I'm only managing to listen to this book in one or two hour stints, and thus I've been chipping away at it for a couple of months now in between other novels, where I normally go through a single book in two or three days. I think that it's not the subject matter that's slowing me down, but perhaps the almost-epistolary nature of the writing combined with the lethargic drawl of the narrator which, while a beautiful experience in itself, becomes quite hard to stay with for more than a couple of hours without finding your spirits tugged down into a saddened, uneasy, lulled state and your mind meandering in the way that the writer's does.

Beautifully narrated, beautifully written

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What can I say… literature does not get better. Irons is phenomenal, as always. As a writer myself, I am both enchanted by his complete mastery of the art and yet pained with a gloomy reality that I may, likely, never have such a command of storytelling and the craft of writing.

Best novel of all time

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I’ve read Lolita before, but Jeremy Iron’s performance brought the text to life in a whole new way. It felt like experiencing one my favorites novels again for the first time. He doesn’t read the novel, he performs it, and it’s an incredible performance. This is the voice of Humbert Humbert.

I can say nothing about Nabokovs writing that hasn’t been said before; it’s perfect, it’s genius, it’s achingly beautiful even when describing disgusting things done by vile characters.

This is an absolute must-listen for people new to the book & anyone looking to experience it again. Stellar all round.

Just fantastic

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Nabokov is a truly great writer (a Nobel prize winner I think); only a great writer could take such a potentially tawdry subject - a middle aged man's obsession with and sexual exploitation of a 12-year old girl - and turn it into a compelling story of the complexity of human relationships without glossing over the darkness, the emptiness and the pain. And the combination of Nabokov's brilliantly fluent and poetical prose and Jeremy Irons' superb narration is such an intoxicating mix - an outstanding audiobook by any yardstick. Superb stuff indeed. I've listened to around 500 audiobooks over the last 15 years and this must be one of the best. Strongly recommended. A genuine 5-star listen.

a truly spellbinding and brilliant book

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