Following a failed marriage to a 'large, puffy, short-legged, big-breasted and practically brainless baba', Humbert Humbert decides to move to America to work as a tutor. Much to his dismay, his plans change and he moves into a boarding house in Ramsdale, New Hampshire. But his disappointment quickly fades after he realises he lives next door to the 'light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul Lo-li-ta.' The relationship blossoms between the man 'with a cesspool of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile' and the sassy, vivacious young girl in Nabokov's highly controversial take on the classic American road trip novel.