Why am I passionate about this?
As a baby, I was fascinated by shadows, how they lengthened and shortened till they disappeared, and how they moved their position around me and objects. I used to play with Barbies; I invented stories that lasted for days, progressively postponing the main events in favor of their preparation. Progressively, I became accustomed to my relatives’s death and their funerals. I realized that time connected these observations and games as much as the novels and films that I loved. In my list, you can find stimulating books where Time shyly shows itself on a stage.
Elisa's book list on timeless books about time
Why did Elisa love this book?
I love how the protagonist conceals the truth through his sophistication and charm. His pedophilia and rape are hidden behind an extensive network of lies about his alleged obsession with nymphets. ‘Between the age limits of nine and fourteen, there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they reveal their true nature, which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac).’
With a simple two-faced name, Humbert Humbert is a narrator with many faces, one of the more complex and discussed in literary studies. He writes his story in prison, forever imprisoned ‘between the age limits of nine and fourteen,’ although his supposed autobiography breaks the walls of his time and that of his nymphets as a timeless flow of perverse mental and linguistic games.
13 authors picked Lolita as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants.
Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all…