Vladimir Nabokov's notorious, hilarious erotic murder mystery takes the form of a monologue by his hero, Humbert Humbert, as he attempts to justify his love for and obsession with the barely adolescent Dolores Haze, known as Lolita. Humbert's cross-country flight with his adored nymphet ends with her betrayal of him with his rival, the evil Quilty, who pursues Lolita not out of love but out of lust and selfishness, and who functions as a kind of double for the more pure-hearted (if perverse) Humbert. Some critics see Humbert (who, like Nabokov, was a European émigré) and Lolita (the quintessentially vulgar American) as personifications of the Old and New Worlds, one corrupting the other (but which?). One of the astonishing aspects of Nabokov's masterpiece is his dazzling command of English, including puns and wordplay worthy of Joyce. Another is the novel's famously checkered publishing history: LOLITA was rejected, banned, censored, and published underground, and it remained unpublished in the US until 1958.

Azar Nafasi formed a book club in Tehran comprised of seven young women who got together to discuss such books as THE GREAT GATSBY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, DAISY MILLER, and, of course, LOLITA--books forbidden by the Islamic government. In this memoir, Nafasi, who was expelled from the country for refusing to wear the veil, writes about those women, the books, and her own career as a teacher of English literature--first in Iran, now (less precariously) at Johns Hopkins.

The narrator tells the story of Ganesh, who rises from a lowly job as masseur to become a healer and then a powerful politician. Finally, he is corrupted and disgusted by the realities of the political life. This novel was the winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1958 and was made into a film in 2002.

These candid, poignant, and entertaining letters were written during the 1950s between the writer V. S. Naipaul at Oxford and his family, chiefly his his younger sister who was in college in India, and his father in Trinidad--a failed writer who worked as a journalist and died young.

HALF A LIFE, another of Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul's highly autobiographical novels, is about Willie Chandran, who leaves his Indian family behind as he finds success in England as a writer. The trouble is that this new, assimilated life begins to seem alien and incomplete. Like all of Naipaul's exiles, Willie finds himself torn between his past and his present, and uneasy about his status as an outsider in both worlds.

V. S. Naipaul continues the semi-autobiographical story he began in HALF A LIFE (2001). Willie Chandran, born in India but living in Berlin, returns to his homeland as an activist, working on behalf of India's poor and lower-caste until he lands in prison. Released because he is a famous and valuable writer, Willie travels to England, gets involved in a ménage-à-trois, finds a job, but becomes increasingly disillusioned with the state of the Western world. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.

These candid, poignant, and entertaining letters were written during the 1950s between the writer V. S. Naipaul at Oxford and his family, chiefly his his younger sister who was in college in India, and his father in Trinidad--a failed writer who worked as a journalist and died young.

This collection of 40 years of V. S. Naipaul's writing encompasses his observations on topics ranging from Muslims in India to a local election in New York City. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

In this collection, Naipaul includes pieces pertinent to his early days in Trinidad and to his writing, among them his Nobel lecture from 2001, the foreword to A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS, and a lengthy, 20-year-old autobiographical essay.