Lolita at 50

It would be a shame to let the year lapse without one more festive mention, here as anywhere, of the greatest novel in English (in American, we should say) in the last fifty years. Vladimir Nabokov dared literature to best Lolita when it was published in September 1955, in Paris (because not one of the five major American publishers Nabokov sent Lo to would have her, or it). Nothing has come close. Not in the United States, anyway. So why Lolita, why a great book, given its vile subject, its pitiful and vile Humbert Humbert, its indefensibly seductive plot? Why not call it, like one critic did in the pages of England’s Sunday Express in 1955, “the filthiest book I have ever read”? Read the full answer...