Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, I read it when I was a about 15 or so.. I read it purely because I found out that it was explicitly banned from my schools' library.
That's really funny, because I read it when I was about 15 too, BUT because it was in our school reading list.
I even had to retell in front of the class the story of Humbert and Lolita's first sexual intercourse (you know, to prove that I read the book). Tell me now, that Soviet schools were boring!

But I totally agree with Olya - Nabokov's "Lolita" (in Russian) is absolutely brilliant! He's creative with words, but he manages to avoid turning his narrative into something pretentious or unnatural. When he needs an epithet he never uses the first (or even second or third) word that comes to mind (no clichés). He choses something absolutely unexpected and seemingly unsuitable, but it works wonderfully. You literally can see a picture in your mind, it's so descriptive and emotional. His novels must have been very hard to translate.. I wonder if they are any good in English (he wrote both English and Russian version)?