Q 01/05

The narrator of Lolita keeps addressing his memoir to which imagined audience?

A) A priest

B) A jury

C) A doctor

D) His wife

Answer · why

B) A jury

A jury. He appeals again and again to the 'ladies and gentlemen of the jury' for sympathy, yet the foreword reveals that he died in jail before any tr...

Q 02/05

Under what pseudonym does the narrator of Lolita write his memoir?

A) John Ray Jr.

B) Humbert Humbert

C) Clare Quilty

D) Vivian Darkbloom

Answer · why

B) Humbert Humbert

Humbert Humbert. Nabokov chose the double rumble as 'a hateful name for a hateful person', but also a kingly one, fit for 'Humbert the Fierce and Humb...

Q 03/05

What is the real name of the girl the narrator calls 'Lolita'?

A) Charlotte Haze

B) Dolores Haze

C) Annabel Leigh

D) Rita Schiller

Answer · why

B) Dolores Haze

Dolores Haze. Lolita is a Spanish pet form of Dolores that only the narrator uses; to her mother and everyone else she is Lo, Lola or Dolly.

Q 04/05

What is the 12-year-old girl doing when the narrator of Lolita first sees her?

A) Playing tennis

B) Sunbathing

C) Roller-skating

D) Practising piano

Answer · why

B) Sunbathing

Sunbathing. He had already made up his mind not to rent the room; one glimpse of her, the image of his lost childhood sweetheart, and he moved in.

Q 05/05

What subject does the narrator of Lolita teach and write textbooks about?

A) French literature

B) Spanish history

C) German philosophy

D) Classical music

Answer · why

A) French literature

French literature. His textbook comparing French and English writers gives the memoir its excuse to drop in Flaubert, Proust, Baudelaire and Ronsard.