Where to start with Vladimir Nabokov

American novelist, 1899–1977.

Best Vladimir Nabokov book to start with: Lolita (1955), on 11 of the 17 lists it could have made.

Start with Pnin if you’d like to enjoy him. It’s a short, funny, tender novel about a Russian professor at an American college. Lolita is the lists’ favourite, and it deserves its place, but it is narrated by a man who abuses a child and asks you to sympathise, and the book knows exactly what he is. He wrote his early novels in Russian and his later ones in English, and the English ones are the easier place to begin.

After that, Pale Fire is for readers who like puzzles: a poem followed by a commentary from someone who may not be reliable. Give it time. The Defense is an early novel, written in Russian, about a chess master.

Save Look at the Harlequins!, Transparent Things and the other late books for the end. They are slim, strange and mostly for people who already love him. If you read only two, make them Pnin and Pale Fire, and come to Lolita when you’re ready for it.