Q 01/05

Who wrote the 1955 novel Lolita?

A) Boris Pasternak

B) Vladimir Nabokov

C) Mikhail Sholokhov

D) Ivan Bunin

Answer · why

B) Vladimir Nabokov

He wrote it in English, his third language, after producing his first nine novels in his mother tongue while living in Berlin.

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

The doubled name recalls Poe's 'William Wilson', a tale about a man haunted by his double, just as the narrator is shadowed by a rival.

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

'Lolita' is the Spanish diminutive of Dolores; critics note the book gives us her feelings only in glimpses through the narrator's self-serving accoun...

Q 04/05

How old is the girl the narrator calls Lolita when he first meets her?

A) 9

B) 10

C) 11

D) 12

Answer · why

D) 12

Kubrick later pointed out that Sue Lyon was 13 when cast, closer to the book's 'twelve and a half' than many audiences assumed.

Q 05/05

The narrator's mother-tongue subject as a professor is the literature of which country?

A) Russia

B) France

C) Germany

D) England

Answer · why

B) France

His textbook comparing French and English writers lets the novel pack in Flaubert, Proust, Rabelais, Baudelaire and Ronsard.