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Lolita

Lolita AuthorVladimir NabokovCountryFranceLanguageEnglishGenreNovelPublisherOlympia Press1955Pages336112,473 words
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a French middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with an American 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he sexually molests after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English and first published in Paris in 1955 by Olympia Press. Later it was translated into Russian by Nabokov himself and published in New York City in 1967 by Phaedra Publishers.

Lolita quickly attained a classic status. The novel was adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and another film by Adrian Lyne in 1997. It has also been adapted several times for the stage and has been the subject of two operas, two ballets, and an acclaimed, but commercially unsuccessful, Broadway musical. Many authors consider it the greatest work of the 20th century, and it has been included in several lists of best books, such as Time's List of the 100 Best Novels, Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, Bokklubben World Library, Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, and The Big Read.

Plot
The novel is prefaced by a fictitious foreword by John Ray Jr., an editor of psychology books. Ray states that he is presenting a memoir written by a man using the pseudonym "Humbert Humbert," who had recently died of heart disease while awaiting a murder trial in jail. The memoir begins with Humbert's birth in Paris in 1910. He spends his childhood on the French Riviera, where he falls in love with his friend Annabel Leigh. This youthful and physically unfulfilled love is interrupted by Annabel's premature death from typhus, which causes Humbert to become sexually obsessed with a specific type of girl, aged 9 to 14, whom he refers to as "nymphets."

After graduation, Humbert works as an English teacher and begins editing an academic literary textbook. Before the outbreak of World War II, Humbert moves to New York. In 1947, he moves to Ramsdale, a small town in New England, where he can calmly continue working on his book. The house that he intends to live in is destroyed in a fire, and in his search for a new home, he meets the widow Charlotte Haze, who is accepting tenants. Humbert visits Charlotte's residence out of politeness and initially intends to decline her offer. However, Charlotte leads Humbert to her garden, where her 12-year-old daughter Dolores (also variably known as Dolly, Dolita, Lo, Lola, and Lolita) is sunbathing. Humbert sees in Dolores the perfect nymphet, the embodiment of his old love Annabel, and quickly decides to move in.

The impassioned Humbert constantly searches for discreet forms of fulfilling his sexual urges, usually via the smallest physical contact with Dolores. When Dolores is sent to summer camp, Humbert receives a letter from Charlotte, who confesses her love for him and gives him an ultimatum � he is to either marry her or move out immediately. Initially terrified, Humbert then begins to see the charm in the situation of being Dolores' stepfather, and so marries Charlotte for instrumental reasons. Charlotte later discovers Humbert's diary, in which she learns of his desire for her daughter and the disgust Charlotte arouses in him. Shocked and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee with Dolores and writes letters addressed to her friends warning them of Humbert. Disbelieving Humbert's false assurance that the diary is a sketch for a future novel, Charlotte runs out of the house to send the letters but is killed by a swerving car.

Humbert destroys the letters and retrieves Dolores from camp, claiming that her mother has fallen seriously ill and has been hospitalized. He then takes her to a high-end hotel that Charlotte had earlier recommended. Humbert knows he will feel guilty raping Dolores while she is conscious so tricks her into taking a sedative by saying it is a vitamin. As he waits for the pill to take effect, he wanders through the hotel and meets a mysterious man who seems to be aware of Humbert's plan for Dolores.

Humbert excuses himself from the conversation and returns to the hotel room. There, he discovers that he had been fobbed with a milder drug, as Dolores is merely drowsy and wakes up frequently, drifting in and out of sleep. He dares not rape her that night. In the morning, Dolores reveals to Humbert that she actually has already lost her virginity, having engaged in sexual activity with an older boy at a different camp a year ago. He begins sexually abusing her. After leaving the hotel, Humbert reveals to Dolores that her mother is dead.

Humbert and Dolores travel across the country, driving all day and staying in motels. Humbert desperately tries to maintain Dolores' interest in travel and himself, and increasingly bribes her in exchange for sexual favors. They finally settle in Beardsley, a small New England town. Humbert adopts the role of Dolores' father and enrolls her in a local private school for girls.

Humbert jealously and strictly controls all of Dolores' social gatherings and forbids her from dating and attending parties. It is only at the instigation of the school headmaster, who regards Humbert as a strict and conservative European parent, that he agrees to Dolores' participation in the school play, the title of which is the same as the hotel in which Humbert met the mysterious man. The day before the premiere of the performance, a serious quarrel breaks out between Dolores and Humbert, and Dolores runs out of the house. When Humbert finds her a few moments later, she tells him that she wants to leave town and continue traveling. Humbert is initially delighted, but as he travels, he becomes increasingly suspicious � he feels that he is being followed by someone Dolores is familiar with.

The man following them is Clare Quilty � a friend of Charlotte and a famous playwright who wrote the play that Dolores was to participate in. In the Colorado mountains, Dolores falls ill. Humbert checks her into a local hospital, from where she is discharged one night by her "uncle." Humbert knows she has no living relatives and he immediately embarks on a frantic search to find Dolores and her abductor, but initially fails. For the next two years, Humbert barely sustains himself in a moderately functional relationship with a young alcoholic named Rita.

Deeply depressed, Humbert unexpectedly receives a letter from a 17-year-old Dolores (signing as "Dolly (Mrs. Richard F. Schiller)"), telling him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert, armed with a pistol, tracks down Dolores' address and gives her the money, which was due as an inheritance from her mother.

Humbert learns that Dolores' husband, a deaf mechanic, is not her abductor. Dolores reveals to Humbert that Quilty took her from the hospital: she was in love with Quilty, but he rejected her when she refused to star in one of his pornographic films. Humbert implores Dolores to leave with him, but she refuses. Humbert then goes to the drug-addled Quilty's mansion and shoots him several times.

Shortly afterward, Humbert is arrested, and in his closing thoughts, he reaffirms his love for Dolores and asks for his memoir to be withheld from public release until after her death. Dolores dies in childbirth on Christmas Day in 1952, disappointing Humbert's prediction that "Dolly Schiller will probably survive me by many years."

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