The Annotated Lolita

First published in 1955, Lolita immediately became one of the most controversial and celebrated novels of the twentieth century. Written with extraordinary linguistic freedom, dark wit, and dazzling sophistication, it tells the story of Humbert Humbert and his obsessive, destructive fixation on the young Dolores Haze.

But Lolita is far more than the disturbing portrait of one man’s obsession. It is also a brilliantly satirical collision between a highly cultivated European sensibility and the exuberant, bewildering world of postwar America. At its heart lies a complex meditation on love, its distortions and illusions, its capacity for transformation, and the devastating ways in which it can be used to disguise obsession.

The Annotated Lolita offers the definitive annotated text of Nabokov’s modern classic. The extensive notes illuminate the novel’s intricate wordplay, literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references, revealing the extraordinary craftsmanship beneath one of the most challenging and enduring works of modern literature.