Lolita (1955) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian and published in 1958 in New York. The book is both internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the narrator and protagonist, Humbert Humbert, becomes obsessed and sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.

After its publication, Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl. The novel was adapted to film in 1962 and again in 1997.

Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Plot summary

Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar born in 1910 in Paris, who is obsessed with what he refers to as "nymphets". This obsession with young girls appears to have been a result of his failure to consummate an affair with a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh, before her premature death from typhus. Shortly before the start of World War II, Humbert leaves Paris for New York. In 1947, he moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. When the house he was promised burns down, he ends up at the door of Charlotte Haze, a widow, who has a sexually charged interpretation of taking in a lodger. As the two make their way through Mrs. Haze's tour of the house, Humbert rehearses different ways of turning her down, but then, after being led out into the garden, he spies Haze's 12-year-old daughter Dolores (variously referred to in the novel as Dolores, Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, and L) sunbathing in the garden. Humbert, seeing Annabel Leigh in her, is instantly smitten with her and eagerly agrees to rent the room.

When Lolita is at summer camp, Mrs. Haze gives Humbert an ultimatum by letter that he must marry her (for she has fallen madly in love with him) or move out. He is horrified at first, but sees living with Lolita as his stepdaughter as a way to make her part of his living fantasy. Charlotte appears oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her and his lust for Lolita until she reads his diary. Horrified and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee with her daughter, writing letters to Humbert, Lolita, and a strict boarding school for young ladies to which she apparently intends to send her daughter. Charlotte confronts Humbert when he returns home, ignoring his protests that the diary entries are just notes for a novel, and bolts from the house to post the letters. But upon crossing the street, she is struck and killed by a passing motorist. A child retrieves the letters and gives them to Humbert, who destroys them.

Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, telling her that her mother is desperately ill in a hospital, and takes her to The Enchanted Hunters, a hotel of regional repute, where he meets a strange man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert intends to use sleeping pills on Lolita, but they have little effect. Instead, she seduces Humbert, and he discovers that he is not her first lover, as she has had a sexual affair at summer camp. After leaving the hotel, Humbert tells the now-troublesome Lolita that her mother is dead. Alone and frightened, Lolita has no choice but to accept Humbert into her life on his terms.