'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine' — Martin Amis, Observer

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed with twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first...

'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine' — Martin Amis, Observer

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed with twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first physically and then artistically, in an attempt to 'fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A tortured soul or a monster?

Humbert Humbert's fixation is just one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dazzling masterpiece, which is infused with savage humour and rich, elaborate language. Adapted for the screen by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 and again by Adrian Lyne in 1997, Lolita has lost none of its power to shock and captivate.

'There's no funnier monster in literature than poor, doomed Humbert Humbert' — Independent