There has been a renewed interest in Nabokov's taboo book ‘‘Lolita,'' which was first published in 1955. In spite of the fact that the book is considered a literary masterpiece and a 20th-century literary classic, ‘‘Lolita'' is one of the most censored books in America. Last year's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the book's publication and Azar Nafisi's 2003 bestselling ‘‘Reading Lolita in Tehran,'' about an Iranian professor of literature who teaches western literature clandestinely to a group of young Iranian women, aided the resurgence of interest in the book.

Recently I had the privilege of participating in the discussion of ‘‘Lolita'' by the Roving Readers Book Club, a San Bernardino group that delves into a book in the same way students in a literature class would. An incredible amount of diverse thoughts, ideas and interpretations of the book came out of this discussion. However, everyone agreed that ‘‘Lolita'' is a complex book of many depths, linguistic acrobatics and brilliant writing.

‘‘Lolita'' is the story of a pedophile's obsession with pre-adolescent girls and his eventual affair with his thirteen-year old stepdaughter. Or is it?

Humbert Humbert (HH), the main protagonist, writes a memoir about his malignant relationship with his wife's daughter Lolita while he awaits trial for a murder. But he dies of coronary thrombosis before the trial and his lawyer publishes the book.

HH is a failed scholar from an old European family with old European personality, manners and knowledge. He is obsessed with his adolescent love Annabel. This unrequited teenage love haunts him into adulthood. Adult women hold no allure for him. He actually despises them and vilifies them. Hedonistic and self-obsessed, he treats his first wife and the prostitutes with whom he tries to assuage the loss of Annabel with abominable crue lty. With deceitful artifice he lusts after adolescent and pre- adolescent girls, mere children.

Some sort of inheritance brings HH to America where he is sent off to a sanatorium twice for breakdowns. In order to recuperate, he rents a room in a small Eastern town from the widow Haze who has an almost 13-year-old daughter -- Lolita, or Lo, or Dolly or Dolores. The personalities, likes and dislikes of mother and daughter are as hazy to HH as their last name and the constant changes of Lolita's first name suggest. HH marries the mother in order to be near the daughter. Lolita herself is sometimes saucy, sometimes hoydenish and sometimes just a typical surly teen with unarticulated feelings and thoughts.

The wife gets conveniently run over by a car while HH is trying to find a way to murder her. This provides him with an oppor tunity to do with Lolita as he pleases. He seduces her in the first days of a trip across America on which he takes her. Lolita escapes from him on the second trip across the continent.

A few years later he learns that she had left him to be with a famous, if debauched playwright who drops her after a while. When HH rediscovers Lolita she is married and pregnant and living in utter poverty. It is for the murder of the playwright for which HH is awaiting trial and not for sex with a minor.

Nabokov was a renowned wordsmith and a linguist. Some readers find the verbal clues and riddles strewn throughout the novel humorous but for the most part they sickened me. Only at the end, when broken down HH seems to have gotten retribution for his hubris, did I realize how lyrical and sensual the writing is.

My impression o f ‘‘Lol ita'' had been formed by references to Lolita that have suggested her to be a temptress with seductive wiles. But now I understand that all the women in the book and above all Lolita are victims. Lolita is a homeless child that no one really loves.

It would be interesting to speculate on whether or not HH would have become a pedophile had his and Annabel's love progressed into adulthood. In many instances HH tries to justify his obsession with adolescent girls by reminding us that in the past girls were married at 12 or even younger, especially in the case of dynastic marriages.

After reading it, I also understood why the Iranian women read ‘‘Lolita'' first. Sex and marriage with pre-adolescent girls is also quite common in Muslim culture. One of the Prophet Mohammad's wives was only 9 years old , a nd 9 is the legal marriage age for girls in the Islamic Republic of Iran (according to ‘‘Lipstick Jihad'' by Azadeh Moaveni).

Segregated from the rest of the human race, shrouded in cloth from head to toe and having every aspect of their lives controlled by men, the fate of these Iranian women and children on the verge of adulthood, has much in common with the fate of Lolita. They are all victims.

Ophelia Georgiev Roop is library director at the San Bernardino Public Library, 555 W. Sixth St., San Bernardino, CA 92401. Call (909) 381-8215, fax to (909) 381-8229 or e-mail her at oroop@sbpl.org.