‘Lolita,’ Jeffrey Epstein, and the Real Meaning of a Challenging Classic
One particular novel is all over the Epstein files: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Reportedly, this was the one and only book Jeffrey Epstein kept at his bedside table. He owned a first edition. It pops up in emails and in photos, released by the House Oversight Committee, that show young women with quotes from the book written on their bodies.
Lolita is about a 38-year-old man who kidnaps and serially rapes a 12-year-old girl. The book is not only a literary masterpiece, but a fixture of American pop culture. The illicit relationship it depicts is often glamorized in film, music, and art.
Today, Rafaela Siewert interviews Shilo Brooks about Lolita–and about how a novel narrated by a homicidal pedophile rapist came to occupy such a prominent place in American life.
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