1955: Lolita
Author/Editor: Vladimir Nabokov
One of the most controversial novels ever published, Lolita is the story of a man who has a sexual relationship with his twelve-year-old step-daughter and it examines both his and her struggles with the implications. The narrator’s voice is so tortured and yet sophisticated that readers may “find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents”. Although it was banned in both the UK and France when it was first published, Lolita is consistently on many “Best Books” lists. The name Lolita has been adopted into popular language as a term to describe a seductive young girl or situation in which an older man is infatuated with a young girl or vice versa.
