Roger Fishbite

Roger Fishbite is a novel by the American writer and journalist Emily Prager, which was published in 1999.

The novel was written partly as a literary parody of Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita , partly as a "reply both to the book and to the icon that the character Lolita has become."^[1] It tells the story of thirteen-year-old Lucky Lady Linderhoff, and her mother, and their lodger, whom Lucky calls Roger Fishbite.^[2]

While taking its inspiration from Nabokov's Lolita, Prager's novel is narrated by Lucky, not Fishbite, and displays a number of twists and turns that differ from the original text. Prager also updates the story, setting it in the modern-day period, rather than choosing to set it in the 1950s.^[3]

At the heart of the novel is the issue that Lucky raises constantly throughout: The way in which children in America (and western society in general, I would add) are hated and feared by a society that seeks to eroticise them whilst at the same time destroying them.^[4]

What prevents the novel from devolving into an inside joke is the enthralling voice of Lucky Linderhof, who, at nearly 15, tells her tale with the world-weariness befitting an elder statesman of child abuse.^[5]

• Emily Prager's page at Random House

• 1999 American novels
• Works about Lolita
• Parallel literature
• 1990s novel stubs

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