Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old
Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out
of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in
love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a
monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many
dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a
savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.