When Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita was published in America in 1958, it was a blockbuster.  It continues to be both timely and controversial.  Lolita works on multiple levels to give us an enduring literary window into the darkness of abuse and self-deception.

• At face value, it is the first-hand account of a predator, Humbert, and his wild obsession with the orphaned pre-teen girl in his care.
• In general terms, it’s a story of tyranny, delusion, coercion, and cruelty, told by the tyrant himself; we can only guess at Lolita’s point of view, because the narrator (Humbert) has so objectified or “solipsized” her.
• Specifically, British writer Martin Amis called Lolita an elaborate metaphor for the totalitarianism that engulfed Russia, Nabokov’s childhood home.
• In Reading Lolita in Tehran, author Azar Nafisi used Lolita as a metaphor for women’s lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran.