Fire Of Whose Loins?
Was Lolita lifted? The question has been the talk of Europe since a scholar discovered that Vladimir Nabokov was not the first novelist to write about a teen seductress with that now iconic name. German writer Heinz von Lichberg published a 19-page story in 1916 about a girl, also named Lolita, who seduces a boarder in her house, according to an article published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. Nabokov defenders note that while it's true the two writers lived in the same area of Berlin for 15 years, they never met. What's more, there's no evidence Nabokov read von Lichberg's tale. He wasn't particularly interested in contemporary German literature, they say, and he didn't speak much German.

Michael Maar, the literary scholar who wrote the article, insists that Nabokov's greatness is untarnished, whether or not he cribbed the basic plot idea for Lolita, which was published in 1956, five years after von Lichberg's death. "What you can see is that the theme itself is nothing," says Maar, according to the Daily Telegraph of London. What's more, Maar says von Lichberg's story has little artistic merit. Nabokov, however, "takes the subject and creates a work of art." -Anna Mulrine

To contact U.S. News, please fill out this form and make the appropriate selection.