PNIN

"Pnin" (1957), Vladimir Nabokov's fourth novel in English, is devoted to the life adventures of one of the most vulnerable and touching characters in 20th-century literature. A true Russian intellectual and a brilliant scholar, yet an eccentric and unlucky man, Timofey Pnin, who left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, teaches Russian literature at an American university, where he becomes an accidental victim of the intrigues and callousness of his colleagues. Will he manage this time to escape his cunning creator, who has ordained for him the fate of a sufferer, forced time and again to bear the blows of destiny? "Pnin" was published shortly after the scandalous "Lolita" and, receiving enthusiastic reviews from readers and critics, served as a kind of antithesis to the prevailing notion of Nabokov's "immorality" and "soullessness".This edition of the novel is accompanied by a preface, notes, and a concluding essay by the translator.The translator's spelling, punctuation, and transliteration conventions have been preserved.