Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov's novel, narrated by a pedophile using an unreliable narrator, ranks as the most technically dazzling work on this list, rejected by four American publishers before Olympia Press published it in Paris in 1955. Banned in France until 1958, it then became a U.S. bestseller, selling 100,000 copies in its first three weeks—three times faster than the average novel of the era. Its prose is widely regarded as among the finest in English literature, yet it remains challenged more frequently than #8 To Kill a Mockingbird in university curricula for its controversial subject matter.