Humbert Humbert, European intellectual, becomes obsessed with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze. Nabokov wrote the novel in English, his third language, and made it sing. The prose is gorgeous, witty, and designed to seduce the reader into something like complicity before forcing recognition of horror. The novel was rejected by American publishers and first appeared in Paris in 1955. The controversy has never ended, but neither has the recognition of its artistry. It is a book about obsession, about America, about what language can make us feel despite ourselves.