Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause celebre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty...

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969), the longest of Nabokov’s novels, is a witty and parodic account of a man’s lifelong love for his sister. All of his favorite themes and most characteristic techniques are woven into this culminating work of Nabokov’s imagination. The linguistic richness of the book’s free blending of English, Russian, and French is matched by the baroque and dreamlike splendor of the alternate universe it creates,...

Smurov, a Russian emigre living in prewar Berlin, commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife as he searches for proof of his existence among fellow emigres who are too distracted to pay him any heed

Humbert, a divorced British professor, travels to small-town America for a teaching position. He allows himself to be swept into a relationship with Charlotte, whom he marries in order that he might pursue her 14-year-old daughter, Lolita.