Point of View

Lolita is narrated in the first person past tense throughout by an educated Swiss-American, who is a scholar of English and French literatures and—not incidentally—a pedophile. Humbert Humbert (H.H.) is in jail, awaiting trial for cold-blooded murder and rape. Having reread his story after fifty-six days of work, H.H. finds it too slippery. He has camouflaged the names of people and places to avoid harming anyone. His own pseudonym, he feels, expresses well his "nastiness". He starts writing Lolita in a psychopathic ward, on the advice of his lawyer, and completes it in a warm cell awaiting trial. He has decided not to parade Lolita in public, so his intended legal defense will be published only after her death. He believes he has survived in order to immortalize their story.

These technical details are revealed only in the concluding pages...