Nabokov s wise ironic and elegant masterpiece. - A controversial love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. - This annotated edition assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions parodies and cross-references. - Edited with a preface introduction and notes by Alfred Appel Jr. Fascinatingly detailed. -Edmund Morris The New York Times Book Review When it was published in 1955 Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. Awe and exhilaration-along with heartbreak and mordant wit-abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert s obsessive devouring and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America but most of all it is a meditation on love-love as outrage and hallucination madness and transformation.