Book of a lifetime: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

From The Independent archive: Joanna Briscoe is beguiled by the book and falls in love with the most playful, lyrically virtuoso prose writer of the 20th century – if not of all time

Customers at a London bookshop read ‘Lolita’ on its UK release in 1959 (Getty)

The summer after A-levels. I had promised myself that once all the cramming was over, I would buy Lolita. I felt both furtive and outrageously adult as I purchased it in The Totnes Bookshop. I nurtured hazy notions of a racy read to ease my brain after all the Chaucer, imagining this was the Valley of the Dolls with class.

What I didn’t realise, of course, was that I was about to fall in love with the work of the most playful, lyrically virtuoso prose writer of his century – if not of all time. I started reading, and the writing inevitably blew my mind, and has never stopped astonishing me over so many re-readings. It’s like watching a tightrope walker perform Swan Lake while singing Don Giovanni while laughing at a private joke.