Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century

A vibrant collection of sharp and essential modern pieces on the perennially controversial Lolita, by a wide range of celebrated writers, edited by the daughter of Lolita’s original publisher.

In 1958, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in the United States to immediate controversy and bestsellerdom. More than sixty years later, this phenomenal novel generates as much buzz as it did when it was originally published. Now, having commissioned original contributions by Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Erika l. Sánchez, Sloane Crosley, Andre Dubus III, Ian Frazier, Lauren Groff, Stacy Schiff, Emily Mortimer, Victor LaValle, and many more, Jenny Minton Quigley examines how we read Lolita today.

Central to countless issues at the forefront of our national discourse—art and politics, race and whiteness, gender and power, sexual trauma—Lolita lives on, in an afterlife as blinding as a supernova. With original contributions from a stellar cast of prominent twenty-first century writers and edited by the daughter of Lolita’s original publisher in America, Lolita in the Afterlife is a vibrant collection of sharp and essential modern pieces on this perennially provocative book.

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY

Robin Givhan • Aleksandar Hemon • Jim Shepard • Emily Mortimer • Laura Lippman • Erika L. Sánchez • Sarah Weinman • Andre Dubus III • Mary Gaitskill • Zainab Salbi • Christina Baker Kline • Ian Frazier • Cheryl Strayed • Sloane Crosley • Victor LaValle • Jill Kargman • Lila Azam Zanganeh • Roxane Gay • Claire Dederer • Jessica Shattuck • Stacy Schiff • Susan Choi • Kate Elizabeth Russell • Tom Bissell • Kira Von Eichel • Bindu Bansinath • Dani Shapiro • Alexander Chee • Lauren Groff • Morgan Jerkins