"The Statue of Liberty is raising her hand to connect her to Europe," Nabokov wrote in his diary on September 29, 1959, as they left the New York harbor. According to the passenger's testimony, the ship's library organized an exhibition of his books during the voyage: Lolitas, Pnina i Calls for execution.
photo: wikipedia...and Parnassius apollo Pirineus whom he was catching
The captain of the ship - in Vera's opinion "well versed in Freud, but not in Lolita" - tirelessly tried to find out what made the writer choose such a topic.
On the fifth of October, the "Liberté" docked in Le Havre, and the Nabokovs continued by train to Paris, where they had not been since 1940. Now Paris, according to Nabokov's impression, was occupied by Americans and visitors to car showrooms.
LOLITA AND ZAZIE IN THE METRO
On October 23rd of that year, the publishing house Gallimard organized a lavish reception in Nabokov's honor, attended by 1500-2000 guests: publishers returning from the Frankfurt Book Fair, Parisian critics, writers and journalists from all over the world who wanted to talk to Nabokov after Lolita was finally published in France in April of that year, after a three-year ban, and sold very quickly.
The guest of honor, confused, unable to find his way in the noise, asked Ivan Nabokov, the son of his cousin Nikolai: "Please, don't leave me alone!"
He was asked - which French writer would he most like to talk to, (the author of the novel about growing up sexually) Françoise Sagan? "No", he answered, "with Raymond Keno (author of the novel published in our country under the title Caca u metro translated by Danilo Kish) and Alain Robb-Grieu (French nouveau novel)".
Nabokov liked Rob-Grieu's wife, the petite actress Josette Grieu, who dressed up as Lolita. When the waiter asked: "And for the missus ‒ Coca-Cola?", everyone burst out laughing.
Later, Nabokov said that the ideal Lolita would be Catherine Demonjot, who starred in the 1960 film Louis Mal Zazie dans le métro (1960), based on the aforementioned novel by Raymond Keno.
At first, Gallimard did not intend to invite Maurice Girodias (publisher of the first, scandalous edition of Lolita in Paris in 1955), but the clerk who sent out the invitations thought it would be "interesting" if he showed up.
Girodias immediately realized that a public meeting with Nabokov would bring another fifty thousand copies sold. When Dusya Ergaz introduced him to Nabokov, cameras flashed, but, according to Girodias' testimony, only a few phrases or, as Nabokov says, polite smiles, were exchanged. Not knowing who his interlocutor was, Nabokov simply walked away, and Girodias remained disappointed.
Later, he published a fictional version of that meeting in "Playboy" magazine, claiming that Nabokov denied ever having met him. Nabokov replied in a letter that he really did not know at the time that he was talking to Maurice Girodias.
I HOPE YOU STILL REMEMBER IRENE
At Gallimar's reception, Zinaida Shahovska approached Nabokov to greet him, hugging him. He just coldly said: "Bonjour, madame", as if he had a complete stranger in front of him. Shahovska reminded him: "I hope you still remember Irina?"
"Of course", answered Nabokov and immediately turned to Irina Komarova, the sister of his old friend Samuil Kyanzhuntsev, who helped him financially in the 1930s in Paris. He took her phone number and a few days later invited her to dinner and offered to repay her brother the debt from those hard days.
In Paris, Nabokov also met with publishers: George Weidenfeld from London, Claude Gallimard and the future German publisher Henrich Leidig-Rowalt. Vladimir Nabokov's books were well received in Germany, but that did not change his decision to never go there again.
After Paris, the Nabokovs went to London, where during a ceremony at the "Ritz" hotel, the news was announced that on November 25, 1959, the British government refrained from suing under the Obscene Publications Act, so in 1959, Weidenfeld & Nicolson published a renewed edition in English. In Rome, he found the conversation with Albert Moravia boring.
That year, Nabokov learned that Lolita was being published in Greece, Turkey, Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay, and even in India (in Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Malayalam, and Gujarati) and in five Arab countries, and almost all of those editions were pirated.
In Yugoslavia in 1968, thirteen years after the first edition in Paris and ten after the American edition, one year after the emigrant edition in Russian and 11 years before the Soviet edition, Lolita was translated from Russian by Zlatko Crnković and published by "Otokar Keršovani". Then, in 1988, Branko Vučićević translated Lolita from English, in the Narodna knjiga and BIGZ editions and in the Novosti edition, in the "XX century" library in 2004. Dereta published the same Vučićević translation in 2020, which served as the basis for a critical edition, whose editor and afterword author is academician Zoran Paunović.
New Zealand banned it under the old law on the import of "indecent publications", but the court, after the intervention of the Council for Civil Liberties, judged that "Lolita" is not pornography but a work intended for an educated reader. Argentina declared the book immoral in 1959. In Canada, the book was still banned, and in the Republic of South Africa, the ban lasted as long as eight years - from 1974 to 1982.
HOLLYWOOD CALLING - LOLITA ON FILM
A contract with Harris–Kubrick Pictures was signed in January 1960. A film adaptation directed by Stanley Kubrick was to begin in November, possibly in Rome, and Nabokov planned to attend the shoot. A telegram arrived from Irvin Lazar, an agent in New York, confirming the financial terms for the Lolita screenplay: $40.000, with an additional $35.000 if there were no co-authors, paid travel to Los Angeles and back, and all expenses for a stay of six months or longer.
Nabokov received $150.000 from Harris-Kubrick Pictures at the time for the film rights alone, and to that amount should be added profit sharing, some sources mention that Nabokov received 15 percent of the profit.
Nabokov immediately agreed and sent a confirmation telegram the same day.
Because he didn't want to fly, the trip to Beverly Hills took twelve days - by train, by boat, and again by train. He and Vera boarded the first class of the train, but it seemed second class compared to the former Nord Express. In Le Havre, they boarded the ship "United States" and requested a cabin on the upper deck, but, as celebrities, they were transferred to a luxury suite and given a basket of fruit and a bottle of whiskey.
At 2088 Mandeville Canyon Street, near Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood Heights, where many of the actors lived, the Nabokovs moved into a rented mansion surrounded by a garden of avocado and tangerine trees, hibiscus and palm trees, where bright tropical birds called out.
In Beverly Hills, Nabokov met John Huston, Ira and Lee Gershwin.
At a cocktail party at producer David Selznick's house, he talked to a strong, tanned man.
"What do you do?" he asked him.
"The movie," John Wayne answered.
According to Vera's testimony, at the second reception, Nabokov spoke to the beautiful brunette in French and praised her "wonderful Parisian pronunciation".
"What the hell kind of Parisian?! This is Roman French," Gina Lolobrigida laughed.
It is said that Nabokov took a liking to Marilyn Monroe, but soon realized that Hollywood was not his environment and stopped going to cocktail parties.
In the preface to the published script, Nabokov admits: "By my nature, I am not a playwright."
The first film adaptation of the novel was filmed in 1962, directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on a script partially written by Nabokov himself. Because of the so-called According to the Hayes Code, a strict rulebook that from 1934 to the 1960s regulated what was allowed to be shown on the American screen, many erotic and controversial elements are more hinted at than shown in the film. Nabokov himself later admitted that only "about twenty percent" of his script remained in the final film.
Another major adaptation followed in 1997, directed by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons and Dominic Swain. This film more openly portrayed the erotic and emotional dimension of Humbert and Lolita's relationship.
photo: Nabokov archive"LOLITA": One of the numerous screen adaptations
SUE LYON, MOVIE LOLITA - TOO YOUNG TO GO TO THE CINEMA ALONE
Laurence Olivier, David Niven and Marlon Brando were nominated for the role of Humbert.
At the end of September, producers James Harris and Stanley Kubrick chose James Mason for the role of Humbert, Peter Sellers for the role of Quility. The film was shot in 1961/1962. at Elstree Studios near London.
Kubrick invited Nabokov to his home in Beverly Hills and showed him photographs of the eight hundred or so girls who had auditioned for the role of Dolores Hayes, Lolita. Nabokov pointed to Sue Lyon and said: "She, and no other."
After the final rehearsals, Kubrick had already chosen her, sixteen-year-old Sue Lyon. She was born in 1946 in Daven, the youngest of five children. Her father died when she was a baby. The family moved to Los Angeles where, to help her mother, she worked as a child model and extra from the age of eleven.
When the film premiered, Sue Lyon was too young to see it in theaters by herself, as local distributors and theaters imposed informal bans on younger audiences. At that time, the later system of film age ratings did not yet exist in the United States, the MPA rating was not introduced until 1968, but a combination of the Hayes Production Code and local cinema rules applied. Distributors and theater owners introduced informal bans for younger audiences, with warnings like "No one under 16 admitted unless accompanied by parent", so ironically, the lead actress was legally too young to watch her own film without a companion.
For his debut role in Lolita Sue Lyon was awarded the Golden Globe for Most Promising New Actress. Variety praised her "happy film debut", while New York Times critic Bozley Crowther pointed out that, although physically impressive, she was not nymphet.
In 1962, on a seven-inch vinyl single by MGM Records, Sue Lyon sang the then-style "ya-ya" on the Nelson Riddle track Lolita, Ya. Ya. It did not make it to the charts.
She played later with Ava Gardner and Richard Burton in Nights of the iguana by John Huston, after a play by Tennessee Williams. She died in 2019.
Titled films appeared in Europe Les Nymphettes i The Nymphs, misrepresented as "based on Nabokov's motives Lolitas".
Lolita dolls appeared, in cartoons visitors from Mars said: "Take me to your Lolita". A genus of butterflies from Ecuador, discovered later, in the eighties, was named Madeleine Lolita.
"HURRICANE LOLITA" AND DMITRIJEV "THE LOLITA AFFAIR" IN MILAN
When she broke through, Lolita became a bestseller. More than 100.000 copies were sold in the first three weeks, reportedly breaking a record Gone with the wind Margaret Mitchell.
Nabokov became a star of contemporary world literature of the 20th century and improved his material condition.
U Pale fire he called the success of the book "Hurricane Lolita".
"All this should have happened thirty years ago," he wrote to his sister.
Some self-styled agent easily persuaded the son of Dmitri, an opera singer and playboy, to hold a "competition for the role of Lolita", with broadcast on national television and a jury composed of La Scala singers - with a "winner" pre-selected. For two days, his Milan studio was full of "fully mature nymphets", often accompanied by provincial mothers.
When Nabokov saw a photo of the "finalists" sitting around Dmitri on his enormous bed covered with a satin bedspread in a fashion show, he sent him a telegram to stop advertising immediately. Lolitas. In the letter, he then explained to him that this "infantile trick" was only harmful to his reputation among fans of serious music.
Vera and Vladimir were worried about Dmitri's penchant for fast cars (he drove a Triumph car) and changing wives quickly. "It is not healthy to worry so much, we are both 120 years old," Nabokov wrote to Dmitri. Then came the good news: Dmitri won first place among the basses at the International Opera Competition in Reggio Emilia and earned the right to make his debut in Reggio the following spring.
LOLITATo the USSR-U"THE SHAMELESSNESS OF YOUR LIPS, Lolito"
Some European newspapers wrote that "the moment Uncle Sam became a caricature of himself, Lolita could quite nicely replace it as a symbol of America". Lolita became a product of Cold War soft power.
In the Soviet Union Lolita circulated in samizdat: at the end of the sixties, it could be "rented" for a night for five rubles, or for ten - with permission to copy.
When in 1971 Andrej Voznesenski published a song Violets alluding to Lolita, most readers did not understand the allusion, "The rebel in the minister's chair, and the nun teaches Nabokov". The same was the case with Yevgeny Yevtushenko's song, which mentions "the shamelessness of your children's lips, Lolita".
As noted by researcher Olga Šehovtsova, from 1959 to 1971, the novel was branded in the USSR as a "spiritual poison" and a "treasonous product of emigrants". During the seventies Lolita was interpreted as an example of American modernism and satirical prose, and in the late eighties as part of Nabokov's literary world.
Lolita was first published in the USSR during perestroika in 1989, in the library of the magazine "Foreign Literature", in a circulation of 100.000 copies, and by 1991 it reached almost two million copies. Reactions were divided.
Critic Nikolay Meljnikov cites a letter from a reader to "Literaturna Gazeta" who, after buying it, "was once banned." Lolita, was outraged: "A novel about a forty-year-old bigamist who seduces his twelve-year-old stepdaughter, about their sexual relations and orgies - that is material for criminal charges! If Mr. Nabokov is alive, Interpol should be immediately asked to arrest him as a literary sadist and pervert!"
Neither Soviet nor foreign authorities heeded his request. And even if they did, in 1991, when that letter was written, Vladimir Nabokov's peace could no longer be disturbed.
"SWEET DOCTOR ZHIVAGO OF THE CONFUSING MYSTIC"
While the publishing drama was going on around the publication Lolitas, Boris Pasternak wrote the manuscript of his novel in 1957 Dr. Zhivago sent to the literary magazines "Novi Mir" and "Znamja", as well as to the editors of the almanac "Književna Moskva", but none of those editions dared to publish it.
The novel was published in Italy and then in the Netherlands in 1958.
Literary historian Ivan Tolstoy, grandson of writer Alexei Tolstoy, believes that the CIA organized the publication of that book in Russian abroad. The novel was published in Italian by Feltrinelli in 1957 and in Russian in 1958.
The "Washington Post" obtained previously classified documents published in 2014 that testify that the CIA, during the Cold War, helped spread the novel behind the "Iron Curtain."
"This book has great propaganda value, not only because of its thought-provoking message, but also because of the circumstances under which it was written: we have an opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder what is wrong with their government if not even one good literary work, written by a man recognized as one of the greatest living Russian writers, can be published in his own country, in his own language, for his own people," said an internal report from 1958, which was later disclosed at the author's request. books The Zhivago Affair (Peter Finn & Petra Couvée – The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book.
The Soviet authorities, led by Khrushchev, believed that it was Dr. Zhivago In 1950, he questioned the legitimacy of the October Revolution itself and the Soviet order. "I haven't read it, but I condemn it!", they say about the novel Dr. Zhivago writer Anatoly Sofronov spoke at the session of the Board of Directors of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
Boris Pasternak was forced to renounce the Nobel Prize.
For Nabokov, Pasternak was "a gifted but obscure and confused mystic". He called Živaga a "sweet doctor" who suffers from "unbearable sentimentalism", and mixes poetry with ideological pathos.
SOLZHENIKIN "WHO WRITES LIKE A SHOEMAKER" HE DIDN'T COME FOR LUNCH
Five years after the rejection of the novel manuscript Dr. Zhivago, the magazine "Novi mir" (Novyj mir) published in its November 1962 issue, thanks to the editor-in-chief at the time Alexander Tvardovsky, but also with the personal consent of Nikita Khrushchev One day of Ivan Denisovich (One Day of Ivan Denisovich) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which for the first time openly depicts life in a Stalinist camp (gulag). He denounced the abuses of the Stalin era without touching the principles of the revolution or the role of the party.
The period 1956–1962. it was marked by the release of inmates from the gulag, rehabilitations, partial liberalization of culture and the publication of other literary works that were previously banned. De-Stalinization was effectively completed in 1964 with Khrushchev's removal from power. Solzhenitsyn fell out of favor again, his works were banned, he was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR in 1969 and expelled in 1974.
photo: Nabokov archiveTHE WRITER LOOKS FOR THE WORD: Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov spoke of Solzhenitsyn as a moralistic didacticist and preacher, as a "provincial agitator", and he called his works "reports on misery, without artistic imagination".
Nabokov believed that real literature must be outside of politics, so Pasternak was too ideological for him, and Solzhenitsyn - an almost unpleasant example of how art is reduced to moral didacticism.
This is evidenced by interviews from "Strong Opinions" and comments in Brian Boyd's book, as well as Nabokov's letters to Edmund Wilson.
Andrea Pitzer writes that before Solzhenitsyn's expulsion, Nabokov was convinced that he was an ex-convict somehow connected to the KGB. How else could his works be published in Russia and reach the West, while he himself would remain at large?
In an interview with the "New York Times" correspondent, Nabokov described him as a mediocre writer, and in his diary he called his texts "a collection of colorful newspaper clichés".
After Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize, as the "New York Times" wrote, Nabokov, sitting on the balcony of his room in the Montreux Palace, read excerpts from the novel aloud to Vera on summer evenings. August 1914. and both "laughed" at Solzhenitsyn's "peasant prose". In a letter written a few days after the publication of the article, Vera objected to the word "laughed" expressing her admiration for Solzhenitsyn's courage, but still admitting that the Nabokovs did not value his writing highly. Once, in a private conversation, Vera noticed that Solzhenitsyn writes like a shoemaker.
Solzhenitsyn, on the contrary, admired Nabokov's mastery and in 1972, while he was still in the Soviet Union, he sent a letter to the Academy in which, as a Nobel laureate, he recommended that the prize be awarded to the banned Nabokov in Russia.
Andrea Pitzer, American journalist, historian and literary critic, in a detailed biography The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov (2013) describes how on October 6, 1974 Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera were sitting in a special room of the restaurant of the Swiss hotel "Montrë-Palace" waiting for Alexander Solzhenitsyn to have lunch together.
The morning of October 6 indicated a rainy day, but Solzhenitsyn, who was traveling south from Zurich, was not interested in the weather. Just eight months ago, in February, he spent the night in the KGB pretrial detention center in Lefortovo, accused of treason, and then he was forcibly expelled from the country - they simply threw him out to Frankfurt am Main. Now he was circling the shores of Lake Geneva on the elegant Grand rue Montrëa, heading to meet one of the world's most famous writers, whom he himself had nominated for the Nobel Prize just two years earlier.
Boyd claims that Solzhenitsyn informed Nabokov of the expected date of their arrival, and Nabokov wrote in his diary: "October 6, 11 a.m. Solzhenitsyn with his wife." The Solzhenitsyns did not receive a reply to their letter, although they called Nabokov's home every day. By the time they arrived in Montreux, the encounter was still unconfirmed. Confused by the meaning of this silence, they drove to the hotel almost crawling along the driveway, debating whether to stop, and finally decided not to.
Two weeks later, the Nabokovs recounted ordering dinner for four in a private room and waiting for the Solzhenitsyns for more than an hour, wondering why the Solzhenitsyns did not show up.
Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn never met.
Nabokov had no personal contact with the Nobel laureate Brodsky, but he sent him jeans while Brodsky was still in the Soviet Union. Some of the chroniclers partially cast doubt on this by asking how he knew what size to send. Then they speculate that Vera, who took care of the material side, probably gave Brodsky the money to buy the jeans for Carl and Ellenday Proffer, the American Slavists who helped him when he got his non-refundable visa.
One of the last Russian writers Nabokov received was the poet Bela Akhmadulina in 1977. The door to his house could only be opened through Vera, but Akhmadulina managed to see him.
He liked her a lot.
TAMARA MET A CHEKIST AND MARRIED HIM
When his books arrived in Russia, Nabokov remained on the "other coast", he did not return to his homeland. "All the Russia I need is always with me: literature, language and my own Russian childhood. I will never go back. I will never surrender."
Nabokov's sister Elena Vladimirovna Sikorska, who after the war worked at the UN library in Geneva, went to Leningrad in 1969, stayed at the Astoria Hotel, and one day came to the palace at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Street.
In a conversation with historian and writer Igor Zalatuski for "Novi Mir", one of the oldest Russian literary magazines, in 1996 she said:
"It was in 1969. I went there alone. I arrive, and there are some old women sitting in the corridor. They very politely ask who I need... I say: no, I don't need anyone, I just want to go up and down."
'Why is that necessary for you?'
And I say that I lived there...
'Which room did you live in?'
I answer: 'In all.'
No, they say, those times are over, go home. Then I brought my friend and we managed to convince the old women. They let me in. I saw our rooms, stained glass windows..."
What happened to Tamara, the novel's heroine Other coasts, alias Mashenko, alias Valentina, Lyusya Shulygina, Nabokov's Annabel Lee?
Vladimir Nabokov's sister, Elena Vladimirovna Sikorska, told the historian Igor Zalatuska from "New Peace" about a letter:
"I received a letter from her daughter. She wrote to me that her mother escaped from St. Petersburg during the revolution, met a Chekist and married him. Maybe he was a good man, I don't know. She lived with him and died in 1967..."
Allegedly, when his sister told him the contents of the letter, Vladimir Nabokov didn't say a word, but his face showed that he was shaken by the news. For him, the past is unattainable and unchangeable - therefore eternal.
THE FALL OF THE BUTTERFLY HUNTER ON THE MAGIC SHORE
Nabokov spent the last decades in Lausanne continuing to write and engage in his other almost obsessive passion - lepidopterology. He used to say that "the most beautiful moment in writing is when the page is covered with handwriting, and the butterfly lands on the table".
The butterfly genus Nabokovia was named after him. These are, for example, Nabokov's phage, Nabokov's ada, tiny blue-winged butterflies that live mainly in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Madeleine Lolita is named after Nabokov's novel Lolita.
On June 18, 1976, seventy-six-year-old Nabokov went to Davos on vacation. He climbed to a height of 1900 meters, in search of Apollo (parnassius apollo), a rare butterfly with milky white wings, speckled with black spots and striking red or orange round eyespots on the hindwings, often considered the "ambassador of Olympus".
He slipped on a steep slope and fell. His net rolled even lower and caught on a spruce branch. Nabokov reached for the net, fell again, hurt himself even more than the first time, and realized that he could not get up. That made him laugh. He waited for the cable car to pass above them, but the tourists saw him waving and smiling and assumed he was fine. It was only on the way back that the operator of the cable car noticed that the tanned old man in shorts was still lying in the same place and sent two people with a stretcher to help. Nabokov lay on the hillside for two and a half hours.
No fractures were found. By the end of the month, he was catching butterflies again, although with a different net, the old one remained hanging on the branch, "like Ovid's lyre".
When they returned from cold Davos to stifling Montreux at the end of July, Nabokov's health began to gradually deteriorate. At the beginning of September, he underwent a urographic examination. It was discovered that he had a prostate tumor. On October 16, he was operated on for a benign adenoma at the private Clinic de Montchoise in Lausanne. After leaving the hospital, he tried not to reveal that he didn't have long to live. He said he hoped to hunt butterflies in Israel in May 1977, but that summer he did not hunt butterflies for the first time since 1957, when his translation Eugene Onegin kept him pinned to the table.
He was transferred to intensive care on June 30. He had difficulty breathing due to pulmonary edema.
Dmitry asked his father in the hospital bed why he was crying.
Vladimir Nabokov replied that a certain butterfly was on its way to its climax, and it was clear from his eyes that he no longer hoped to see it again.
At ten to seven, in the evening of July 2, 1977, his heart stopped.
In Claran, near Montreux, on the monument next to his name and surname, only one word in French is carved: ÉCRIVAIN - writer.
MeToo, Lolita
Ellen Pifer, a professor at the University of Delaware, noted in 2003 that "commentators have tended to ignore the shocking nature of Humbert's sexual behavior and his crime against a child. Instead, they have preferred to concentrate on solving the novel's linguistic puzzles or tracing the contours of its cunning design."
Critic Sally Breen of Griffith University, writing about another life Lolitas, notes that almost 70 years since it was first published, Lolita he still reads from Tokyo to Tibet and Tehran. She assesses that Nabokov's novel still remains relevant, despite the pornographic spins, and Lolita's lillyhips, and the exploitation of young girls, and the global increase in human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in the 21st century, and despite the alarmingly high rates of child abuse.
The MeToo movement in the 2010s contributed to increasing public sensitivity to this former taboo.
Although Hollywood is also in the time Lolitas had a history of exploitation of child stars (from Shirley Temple to Judy Garland), little was said about it, pedophilia among the stars of mass culture will be talked about much later - on the occasion of the trial against Roman Polanski in 1977; on the occasion of the discovery of abuse in the church and schools during the 1980s-90s; on the occasion of the death of American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he created a "wide network" of associates through which he sexually exploited children.
British psychiatrist Lawrence Ratna in his paper "Lolita Vladimir Nabokov: Representation and Reality - A Reexamination Lolitas in the light of research on sexual abuse of children" in the "Journal of Humanistic and Social Sciences" says that the novel takes place in a society where one in nine girls under the age of 18 experiences sexual abuse or assault by an adult.
Some chronicles say that a big hit around the world and a sort of "Lolita of the MeToo era" is the beginner's novel of the American writer Kate Russell. My dark Vanessa, which essentially recreates a conflict similar to Nabokov's, but focuses not on the perpetrator of violence, but on the victim.
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