One of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a strange, troubling love story told by the one of the most unreliable narrators in literature. Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her. Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures. First published in the 1950s, Lolita has lost none of its power to shock and awe.