Pnin

novel by Nabokov

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Article History

Pnin, novel written in English by Vladimir Nabokov, published in 1957. It is an episodic story about Timofey Pnin, an older exiled Russian professor who teaches his native language at the fictional Waindell College in upstate New York. While not considered one of Nabokov’s major works, the novel is a comic and tender portrait of a defenseless intellectual trying to deal with the complexities of American life. The character Pnin turns up again as a minor character in Pale Fire, another of Nabokov’s novels about academic life.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.