Novel
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955
Synopsis
A fictional foreword, signed by an editor of psychology books, presents the memoirs of a man who calls himself Humbert Humbert. A European intellectual born in Paris in 1910, he settles in 1947 in Ramsdale, a small New England town, as a lodger with a widow, Charlotte Haze. He is obsessed with her daughter, Dolores, twelve years old, and agrees to marry the mother in order to stay close to the child. The whole narrative is told by this single narrator, whom the Britannica describes as an antihero and a paedophile.
Context
The novel first appeared in Paris, from Olympia Press, in 1955, then in the United States in 1958. The author himself gave a Russian version of it, published in New York in 1967 by Phaedra. In French, the text is read today in Maurice Couturier's translation, revised by the translator, from Gallimard. The Britannica sees in it an examination of love in the light of lust, conducted by a European narrator in America.
Who it is for
A novel for adults, told by a child sex offender who pleads his own case; the reader must keep in mind who is speaking.
Prizes and reception
According to Britannica, it caused a sensation on its American publication and became its author's best-known work.
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