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Produced by the iLap at WBUR Boston.

This episode contains references to abuse and may not be for all listeners.

From The New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

The story of love, loss and redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakrabardi.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's novel about a man's sexual obsession with a young girl,

is a controversial novel to say the least.

But when Bin Liu Bonsanath started to read it, it unexpectedly became a kind of road map for her.

Showing her a way out of the situation she was in.

She tells the story in her piece, How Lolita freed me from my own humburt.

It's read by Jamila Jamil. Jamila starred in The Good Place on NBC,

and she's host of The New Podcast, I Way With Jamila Jamil.

It was my uncle who gave me my first copy of Lolita.

My father had refused to buy it for me at the bookstore, we often visited together.

Why that book, my father said, is he and I arrived home.

I just want it.

We removed our shoes at the door, where religious superstition required all things unclean to be left.

I wanted to read it.

I was 15, a sophomore in high school, and had learned of Lolita from an English teacher

who had summarized the plot, citing it as an example of unreliable narration.

My uncle knew the basics, the trope of the precocious girl, the Japanese fashion subculture,

...