Reading Lolita in Tehran is an evocative example of woman powel

Russian-American author Vladimir Nobokov's novel, Lolita, created a huge controversy with its plot point of hebephilia.

- GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN

And since this sat uneasily with the political powers in the US and UK, it was first published in France by Olympia Press. In India, the copies of the book were detained at the Bombay port by the Customs for two months before Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru read the novel and decided to let the consignment come in. He said in a note: The book is certainly not pornographic in the normal sense of the word. It is, as I have said, a serious book, seriously written. If there had been no fuss about it, no question need have arisen at all of banning it or preventing its entry. It is this fuss that sometimes makes a difference because people are attracted especially to reading books which are talked about in this way." He was absolutely right. Iwas at school then and overwhelmed by curiosity, somehow managed to lay my hands on a copy. Of course, I could not understand much of what was written, but the thrill of reading a book that had created such a furore excited me. Moreover, there was this talk of a ban. The story of Lolita is simple. It describes the protagonist, a French literature professor, living in New England (US) writing under the pseudonym of Humbert Humbert, kidnapping and sexually abusing a 12year-old girl. In the film, Read