Clearly not written in 2023, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita tells the story of a middle-aged man who’s obsessed with a 12-year-old girl.
But while the novel’s story may not have aged well (assuming, of course, you think the man’s behavior was okay in the mid-’50s…), it’s still been one of the most influential novels of the last 100 years.
Well, usually.
In her new novel Swanna In Love (paperback, audiobook, Kindle), writer Jennifer Belle flips the script by having a 14-year-old girl trying to seduce a 38-year-old man. But as she explains in the following email interview about it, while Belle loves Lolita, it was not an influence on Swanna. Or, for that matter, on Swanna.