Midway through the last century, Lolita burst on the literary scene - a Russian exile's extraordinary gift to American letters and the new world. The scandal provoked by the novel's subject - the sexual passion of a middle-aged European for a twelve-year-old American girl - was quickly upstaged by the critical attention and acclaim it received from readers, scholars, and critics around the world. The contents of this volume comprises an interview with the author as well as nine critical essays that follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader issues and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other work of literature and art and the movies adapted from it.