Lolita
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s immaculate and disturbing masterpiece, is the story of middle-aged Humbert Humbert and his tragic love affair with his 12-year-old, bubble-gum popping stepdaughter Dolores “Lolita” Haze. It’s a post-war road novel, the odyssey of a venerable European man and a prepubescent American girl bouncing across the United States, trying to outrun the past and find a future that doesn’t exist. The prose is by turns passionate and playful, while the narrative is simultaneously lyrical and unsettling and erotic and violent — did I mention that, in addition to being a child molester, Humbert is also a murderer? It’s a kind of inverted detective story: You immediately know someone’s been killed, but have to wait to find out who. The book, which can be viewed as an allegory for Europe’s relationship with America, offers a depiction of love that is as patently original as it is brutally shocking.
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