Humbert Humbert

Main character and unreliable narrator of the 1955 novel Lolita, by Russian-born American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. Humbert is a divorced scholar of French poetry who comes to America and falls in love with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze. As a narrator, Humbert Humbert is remarkable for his sardonicism and satiric wit. Nabokov once said of the name: "The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person." The name evokes the Spanish hombre, "man," and the French ombre, "shadow." Furthermore, the double name hints at the novel's doppelganger motif. Humbert Humbert has been portrayed on film by James Mason and Jeremy Irons. Book magazine ranked Humbert Humbert third on its list of the 100 Best Fictional Characters in Fiction since 1900.