Pnin
Encyclopedia
Pnin is Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

's 13th novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957.

Plot summary

The book's eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n-born professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 living in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Pnin, a refugee in his 50s from both Communist Russia and what he calls the "Hitler war", is an assistant professor of Russian at fictional Waindell College, possibly modeled on Wellesley
Wellesley
- People :* Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington , Irish soldier, statesman, and Prime Minister of the UK* Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington , British politician* Arthur Wellesley, 4th Duke of Wellington , British soldier...

 College or Cornell University, at both of which Nabokov himself taught. At Waindell, Pnin has settled down to an uncertain, untenured
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...

, but semi-respectable academic life, full of various tragicomic mishaps, misfortunes, and difficulties adjusting to American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 life and language.

Characters in the book include his departmental supervisor, various professors and university staff, his landlord, his ex-wife, and her son. The book's narrator, who never identifies himself but who bears many similarities to Nabokov—lepidoptery, a landed-gentry Russian émigré past—gradually reveals himself as a less than disinterested observer. Pnin is last glimpsed fleeing Waindell College, jobless, for an unknown destination.

Background

The novel draws from Nabokov's experience at American academic institutions, primarily Cornell, and it has been claimed that it is "teeming" with people and physical details from that university. The main character is based, in part, on Cornell Professor Marc Szeftel, who may have "somewhat resented the resemblance".

Sections of Pnin were first published, in installments, in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

in order to generate income while Nabokov was scouring the United States for a publisher willing to publish Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...

. It was soon expanded, revised, and published in book form.
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