Modern Classics 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". This seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov"s dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.