The political barbarism of the century made him an exile, a wanderer, a Hotelmensch, not only from his Russian homeland but from the matchless Russian tongue in which his genius would have found its unforced idiom... But I have no hesitation in arguing that this poly-linguistic matrix is the determining fact of Nabokov's life and art. But whereas so many other language exiles clung desperately to the artifice of their native tongue or fell silent, Nabokov moved into successive languages like a travelling potentate...

Lolita is pornography, and we do not plan to review it.

Lolita is one of our finest American novels, a triumph of style and vision, an unforgettable work, Nabokov's best (though not most characteristic) work, a wedd…

Lolita is a fine book, a distinguished book - all right then - a great book.

Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive.

From the American retelling of Romeo and Juliet in West Side Story to the Japanese adaptation of King Lear in Ran, Shakespeare's cultural influence is virtuall…

He made him a hut, wherein he did put The carcass of Robinson Crusoe. O poor Robinson Crusoe!