| Summary: | When creating a new version of Lolita in the 21st century, what do authors retain from Nabokov’s masterpiece? Is it the myth and the icon or is it the diegetic thread? Is it the extravagant prose or the transgression and taboo? After reviewing the feminist or political nuances that tinted many a rewriting of Lolita at the turn of the century, the following article seeks to examine the more recent perspectives offered by the rewriting of Nabokov’s masterpiece in the 21st century. The analysis focuses in particular on three novels that claim close affinities with Lolita. Alissa Nutting’s Tampa (2013) exploits the theme of transgression by creating a feminine Humbert craving for sex with teen boys, while Gaige excludes pedophilia to focus instead on the theme of European exile and of the illicit father-and-daughter roadtrip. Darling River, Les Variations Dolores (2011) by Swedish author Sara Stridsberg is an intensely personal and multilayered rewriting of Lolita that, along with Gaige and Nutting, powerfully illustrates how Lolita’s avatars still shed light on the complexity of their original.
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