 First edition | |
| Author | Donald Harington |
|---|---|
| Country | American |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Romance novel |
| Published | 1993 |
| Publisher | Harcourt |
| Awards | International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award |
| ISBN | 015128122X |
Ekaterina is a 1993 novel by Donald Harington.
| First edition | |
| Author | Donald Harington |
|---|---|
| Country | American |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Romance novel |
| Published | 1993 |
| Publisher | Harcourt |
| Awards | International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award |
| ISBN | 015128122X |
Ekaterina is a 1993 novel by Donald Harington.
Ekaterina is an exiled Svanetian princess who arrives at an unnamed city at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela, Pittsburgh. There, she gets a job teaching an introductory mycology class at a university. Meanwhile, she rents a room from a woman, Loretta, who lives there with her twelve-year-old son, Kenny, who immediately takes a precocious liking to her. She befriends the 12-year-old boy called Kenny who reminds her of two young pubertal boys she had relationships with in Russia, Islamber and Dzhordzha. Harington describes the attractive boy as a faunlet, a male counterpart to Vladimir Nabokov's nymphet in Lolita.
After two months, the 27-year-old Ekaterina seduces Kenny and they have sex. During the course of their sexual relationship, Kenny, already a juvenile delinquent, steals contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. When Kenny confesses his sexual relationship with Ekaterina after being caught stealing car parts, his mother forces Ekaterina to leave. She settles in town called Stick Around where she befriends a woman named Sharon, who indirectly introduces her to a boy named Jason. Later, she engages Jason on his twelfth birthday by giving him an all-over massage in the bath while baby-sitting him.
With the help of a novelist and improbable creative writing teacher named Ingraham, Ekaterina matures as a writer, eventually publishing not only a successful autobiography, Louder, Engram! (invoking Nabokov's revised autobiography, Speak, Memory), but also several works of fiction, one of which, a novel called Georgie Boy, becomes a bestseller, allowing her to move from "Stick Around," this novel's disguise for Stay More, the primal setting for all of Harington's novels except his first, The Cherry Pit, to a hotel in Arcaty, the novel's counterpart to the real Arkansas Ozarks town of Eureka Springs. In Arcaty, she meets young Travis Coe, another twelve-year-old boy, who moves into her luxurious penthouse apartment as her houseboy. After getting the lice out of his hair, Ekaterina invites Travis into her bed – just twelve days after they meet. Travis turns out to be a considerably more complex presence than his new employer has anticipated, and the relationship does not last. Ekaterina discovers that Travis was not a virgin and kicks him out, becoming obsessed with how he lost his virginity. Travis does go on to star in Hollywood's screen adaptation of Georgie Boy. Ekaterina also benefits by turning her investigation of the girl to whom Travis lost his virginity into a series of short stories that propel her fame further by being published in Playboy magazine.
Ekaterina's relationships with pubescent boys constitute only one facet of this character's ingeniously layered life-story. Donald Harington’s writing is sometimes described as magic realism, but that term hardly begins to suggest the narrative pyrotechnics of Ekaterina, which the author has aptly described as not so much a tribute to Nabokov's Lolita as an apotheosis of it. [1]
The book was reviewed by several news sources such as the Los Angeles Times , [2] Orlando Sentinel , [3] The Washington Post [4] and The New York Times [5] Kirkus Reviews said of the book: "Grand entertainment from an author who's beent too little known for tool long: perhaps this zany homage to Nabokov (especially Lolita) will bring deserved attention to Harrington (sic)'s impressive body of work" while Publishers Weekly said: "Ekaterina is an acknowledged homage to Nabokov, particularly to Lolita, and if it misses some of the Russian master's literary playfulness, it has many charms of its own...". Novelist D. M. Thomas at the Los Angeles Times also called the book " Superbly crafted, foxy, engaging, funny, joyous". [6]
Ekaterina also won a 1996 International Dublin Literary Award. [7]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Russia, he wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States and beginning to write in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945, but he and his wife returned to Europe in 1961, settling in Montreux, Switzerland.
Suellyn Lyon was an American actress. She joined the entertainment industry as a model at the age of 13, and later rose to prominence and won a Golden Globe for playing the title role in the film Lolita (1962). Her other film appearances included The Night of the Iguana (1964), 7 Women (1966), Tony Rome (1967), and Evel Knievel (1971).
Pnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States launched Nabokov's career into literary prominence. Its eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born assistant professor in his 50s living in the United States, whose character is believed to be based partially on the life of both Nabokov's colleague Marc Szeftel as well as on Nabokov himself. Exiled by the Russian Revolution and what he calls the "Hitler war", Pnin teaches Russian at the fictional Waindell College, loosely inspired by Cornell University and Wellesley College—places where Nabokov himself taught.
The Original of Laura is an incomplete novel by Vladimir Nabokov, which he was writing at the time of his death in 1977. It was published by Nabokov’s son Dmitri Nabokov in 2009, despite the author’s request that the work be destroyed upon his death.
Lolita is a 1962 comedy-drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the 1955 novel of the same title by Vladimir Nabokov, who is also credited with writing the screenplay. The film follows Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged literature lecturer who becomes sexually infatuated with Dolores Haze, a young adolescent girl. It stars James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and Sue Lyon as the titular character.
Lolita is a 1997 drama film directed by Adrian Lyne and written by Stephen Schiff. It is the second screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze, and Frank Langella as Clare Quilty. The film is about a middle-aged male professor, Humbert, who rents a room in the house of the widow Charlotte Haze and becomes sexually attracted to her adolescent daughter Dolores, also called "Lo" or "Lolita".
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939 in Paris and first published in 1941. A work centred on language and its inability to convey any satisfactory definition, it has been identified as a forerunner of the postmodernist novel.
Florence Sally Horner was a girl abducted by serial child molester Frank La Salle in 1948. It is possible that Vladimir Nabokov drew on the details of her case in writing his famous novel Lolita.
Lolita, My Love was an unsuccessful musical by John Barry and Alan Jay Lerner, based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita. It closed in Boston in 1971 while on a tour prior to Broadway.
Blanche Baker is an American actress and filmmaker. She won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the television mini-series Holocaust. Baker is known for her role as Ginny Baker in Sixteen Candles; she also starred in the title role of Lolita on Broadway. In 2012, she produced and starred in a film about Ruth Madoff titled Ruth Madoff Occupies Wall Street.
Look at the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.
The term "Lolita" is used to define a young girl as "precociously seductive...without connotations of victimization". The term derives from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita, which describes the narrator's sexual obsession and subsequent sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl named Dolores, whose nickname was Lolita.
The Enchanter is a novella written by Vladimir Nabokov in Paris in 1939. As Волшебник (Volshebnik) it was his last work of fiction written in Russian. Nabokov never published it during his lifetime. After his death, his son Dmitri translated the novella into English in 1986 and it was published the following year. Its original Russian version became available in 1991. The story deals with the hebephilia of the protagonist and thus is linked to and presages the Lolita theme.
Lo's Diary is a 1995 novel (ISBN 0964374021) by Pia Pera, retelling Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita from the point of view of "Dolores Haze (Lolita)".
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English and first published in Paris in 1955 by Olympia Press. Later it was translated into Russian by Nabokov himself and published in New York City in 1967 by Phaedra Publishers.
Lolita (Лолита) is an opera in two acts by composer Rodion Shchedrin. Composed in 1992, it uses a Russian language libretto by the composer which is based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name, written in English. The opera premiered in 1994 at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm, using a Swedish language translation of the original libretto.
Lolita is a play adapted by Edward Albee from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name. The troubled production opened on Broadway on March 19, 1981 after 31 previews and closed after only 12 performances.
Amity Gaige is an American novelist, known for her books O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. She is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction.
A Fair Maiden is a 2010 novella by Joyce Carol Oates that chronicles the relationship between teenage nanny Katya Spivak and the much older, affluent artist Marcus Kidder. The novel's themes and plot are reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Jamie Bethany Loftus is a writer, stand up alternative comedian, animator, podcast co-host, and actor based in Los Angeles. She is known for her solo work, such as her one-woman shows I Lost My Virginity August 15, 2010 and Boss, Whom is Girl. She has also written comedic articles, and written and starred in video content, for media sites such as Adult Swim, Comedy Central, Paste, and Super Deluxe. She was nominated for an Emmy for her work on Robot Chicken in 2020.