Nabokov is a tough nut to crack, and people love to argue about whether he's a modernist or postmodernist. Makes sense, we guess, since there's a definite continuity between the two—and Nabokov most likely dabbled in both.

Nabokov's most postmodern novel is Pale Fire, which, like Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, has an experimental narrative structure and dashes our expectations. Not only does it draw attention to the processes of producing and reading a text (it's totally meta), it doesn't point to art as a way of recovering lost meaning—instead, it revels in its chaos and refuses to provide any clear-cut answers. Along with works such as Pnin (1957), Ada or Ador (1969), and The Gift (1970), Pale Fire helps demonstrate why Nabokov is regularly named as a postmodern trailblazer.

Lolita

Quick recap: a thirtysomething literature professor, the unfortunately-named Humbert Humbert, becomes obsessed with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Dolores, and gives her the nickname "Lolita." The nickname has since entered into popular culture to describe the kind of "nymphet" portrayed in this novel and has been name checked in loads of other cultural texts. The crux of the novel (pedophilia) may be controversial, but its influence on other texts is huge, having inspired such acclaimed postmodern authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie.

Pale Fire

Not only is Pale Fire Nabokov's most obviously postmodern work; it's also often seen as one of the ultimate postmodern texts and an example of "the literature of exhaustion". So what's it about? Well, it starts out with a foreword by a scholar called Charles Kinbote, who has been entrusted with the final poem of his late friend John Shade. The poem is called "Pale Fire," and Kinbote has been editing it for publication. The book that we're reading includes the end result: a poem of four cantos along with Kinbote's own commentary and notes. We're not just talking a few footnotes either—with Kinbote's commentary takes up more room than the poem itself.

Chew on This

We know that Lolita is full of intertextual references, but how many can you spot? Head over to this page for a checklist of the many cultural shout-outs that are sprinkled throughout this novel.

In addition to referencing various authors and texts, Nabokov is a maestro when it comes to creating a mash up of genres. Take a look here for more on the various types of writing that Nabokov impersonates.