An novel of college life. Martin Amis in a review of The Original of Laura has deemed it—along with VN’s Lolita and Despair—“immortal.” It’s certainly every bit as good as Lucky Jim but with a Russian “ahksent.”

The Revenge of Timofey PninThe traffic light was red. Timofey Pavlovich Pnin sat patiently at the steering wheel of his blue sedan directly behind a giant truck loaded with barrels of Budweiser, the inferior version of the Budvar he'd enjoyed in his Prague student days. On the passenger seat of the sedan, his paws resting on the open window, sat Gamlet, the stray dog Pnin had been feeding for the past few months, slowly encouraging the timid animal's trust. Gamlet had been unsure about the trip,...

A little novel by Vladimir Nabokov features Pnin, an immigrant of Russian origin and professor at an American university; he's an endearing, distracted, and funny character that most of those around him consider a half-failure. He receives a significant number of tiles during his life, which the narrator gives us an overview of him. Most of the novel shows us its interactions with academia, and the author takes the opportunity to describe and portray it. The main attraction is the writing of V.

I read this wonderful novel around the end of 1969, when I was drawing inescapably narrowing conclusions about the necessary but rather depressing ordinary events of my daily life at college. It fit my mood perfectly.All that winter and spring my moodiness grew as I was carried into the inevitable - and to me now, rather predictable - whirlpool of events commonly recognized as coming of age.My identification with hapless Professor Pnin, eternal victim, had thus been made complete.Shall I dare sa...

The evening lessons were always the most difficult. Drained of ambulating the willing grey cells throughout the carnage of day classes, the young readers, almost resignedly, filled the quiet room at the end of the corridor. A subdued tête-à-tête, almost at once, broke into a charlatan laughter and the very next moment, died in their bosoms as Professor Pnin entered the classroom. Straightening the meagre crop on his head and adjusting (and re-adjusting) his tortoise-shell glasses, he cleared his...

Pnin is a character that I may see as a client, sitting across from me and discussing his life frankly. The tale is not tall, but genuine. He will discuss his love of Russian literature and his expertise in various areas. He will crack jokes that are just out of reach enough to make each of them a faux pas. He will unconsciously pull for affirmation of his status, wanting my acceptance and love. He will want to know that he matters. Under it, I will sense the glowing embers of a fire that has be...

“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”Pnin ~~ Vladimir NabokovI have never read anything like Pnin ~~ Nabokov uses language like no other writer I've read before. I am riveted by both this book and Nabokov's writing. The strength of Pnin is its title character, Russian emigrate and professor, Timofey Pnin. A

Whilst a certain novel featuring a middle-aged man infatuating over his seduction of a 12-year-old girl was causing a storm in the literary world, along came the gentle breeze that was Pnin. Another remarkable character in a career littered with remarkable characters. After arriving in America in 1940, with wife Véra, and son Dmitri, as virtually broke refugees from Nazi-occupied France, Nabokov was able to find employment as a university teacher of Russian and comparative literature, first at i...

485. Pnin, Vladimir NabokovPnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulation...

Video reviewThe passage where Pnin reads that magazine cartoon must be the funniest in all American literature!

I had a professor, in fact he had no professor’s title, but we always addressed him that way. So, I had a professor who taught me maths. No, actually he was trying to teach me, he was doing his best to familiarize me with secrets of the queen of science. Alas ! I truly felt pity for him since I was stupendously immune to that knowledge. I was standing at the blackboard attempting to solve some mysterious to me equation and professor, waving his hand, would sigh then get out of my sight, please

Several short stories about an absent minded professor rammed together and called a novel (but that’s okay, people do it all the time), Pnin is almost beloved by readers who aren’t me. Professor Pnin with his hilariously broken English is allegedly endearing but I was not even slightly endeared. This was footling stuff. He gets on the wrong train. He nearly misses giving an evening lecture. He buys a football for a kid who doesn’t like football. He doesn’t realise his job is on the line. He talk...

If one wanted to undertake a neat little study of Nabokov’s fictional prowess, they should read Lolita and Pnin back to back. They were written concurrently, in little middle-American roadside motels (the ones that are chronicled so abundantly in Lolita) during Nabokov and Véra’s summer-long butterfly hunting tours. Pnin was Nabokov’s antidote and respite from Humbert’s grotesqueries, the opposite pole of character, and we should marvel at the achievement that while he was creating the most erud...

I recently read Doctor Zhivago which Nabokov hated. You could say these two books are the antithesis of each other. Zhivago strives to depict a poetic vision of real life on a huge canvas and find meaning therein; Pnin is self-pleasuring art for art’s sake on a tiny canvas. Nabokov isn’t remotely interested in “real life” or deep meaning or huge canvases. He passes over the Russian Revolution in a couple of sentences whereas a description of a room that will only feature once in the entire novel...

I would call this 1957 Nabokov novel a tragicomedy, leaning more to the comedy. Timofey Pnin is a likeable Russian emigre, a nice man, maybe too nice for his own good. Pnin is an assistant professor at fictional Wainsdell College, probably modeled after Cornell University where Nabokov taught. Even though Pnin has become an American citizen, he still struggles with the English language. He has difficultly being understood by his students and his colleagues. He makes his way through life in an ho...

A promised land isn’t a land of milk and honey for everyone…Now a secret must be imparted. Professor Pnin was on the wrong train. He was unaware of it, and so was the conductor, already threading his way through the train to Pnin’s coach. As a matter of fact, Pnin at the moment felt very well satisfied with himself.Pnin is a stranger in a strange land – a learnt misfit in search of his singular niche… Don Quixote trying to defeat an especially malicious windmill.‘Yes,’ said Pnin with a sigh, ‘in...

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov is a little gem I will come back to again. Reasons being (a) it is so good and (b) I love the character Professor Timofey Pnin. I did get lost in a couple of passages. I think this is due to the writing of Nabokov as it’s a bit too clever in parts for me, but I will make a point of understanding the whole thing one day. But I got 90% of it – I think.Pnin must have been a sight to behold, he had a bronzed bald dome, was clean-shaven and his absence of eyebrows were partia...

Delightful! I can think of no other word to describe this book. It had me smiling on every other page and marveling at Nabokov’s wit. But of course the humor only thinly veils the underlying sadness. Pnin is one of the most moving characters I’ve come across; infinitely amusing,stubborn, generous and poignantly insistent on protecting his own private universe. Nabokov’s subtle satire of campus life is exquisite, as is his depiction of Russian émigré life. I read that he wrote Pnin simultaneously...

Coming from the master word-smith, a critic and the dictator of the reading choices of legions of readers comes a book backed by a blurb which compares Nobokov to a standard stand-up comedian with a professional capacity of making the audience laugh hysterically. Sad to say, the humour in the books failed to appeal me and was eclipsed by the unfortunate tribulations that influenced the demure and naive professor Timofey Pnin's reputation amongst his associates and the staff of the University. T

Later Nabokov, oddly sweet compared with the more tart early novels. Bad poetry is savaged only once.The eponymous Pnin, an ageing expatriate academic engaged in teaching Russian in small town America, is the hero of this oddly optimistic and even joyful novel. The wonder of putting trainers (Sneakers in certain jurisdictions) in the washing machine and listening to them running round or being taken as some kind of saint or angel as he sits broad smiling with a large Greek cross on his bare ches...