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Pnin
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Pnin Hardcover - 2004

by Vladimir Nabokov; Introduction by David Lodge


From the publisher

One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian migr precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunder-standings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator. Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader's deepest protective instinct. Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.

From the jacket flap

One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, PNIN features his funniest and most heartrending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. 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 manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader's deepest protective instinct. Serialized in "The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, PNIN" brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.

Details

  • Title Pnin
  • Author Vladimir Nabokov; Introduction by David Lodge
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 143
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Everyman's Library, New York
  • Date 2004-04-06
  • ISBN 9781400041985 / 1400041988
  • Weight 0.65 lbs (0.29 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.32 x 5.26 x 0.65 in (21.13 x 13.36 x 1.65 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects College teachers - United States, Refugees - United States
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2004271364
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

“Hilariously funny and of a sadness.” –Graham Greene

Pnin’s vita, though its essence is saintliness, is yet a work of brilliant magic and fabulous laughter.” –The New Republic

“Fun and satire are just the beginning of the rewards of this novel. Generous, bewildered Pnin, that most kindly and impractical of men, wins our affection and respect.” –Chicago Tribune

“Nabokov can move you to laughter in the way the masters can–to laughter that is near to tears.” –The Guardian

Citations

  • Newsweek, 08/11/2008, Page 12

About the author

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins. The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri. Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses-the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions-which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.
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Pnin: Introduction by David Lodge (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)
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Pnin: Introduction by David Lodge (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

by Vladimir Nabokov

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Pnin (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)
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Pnin (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

by Nabokov, Vladimir; Lodge, David [Introduction]

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Pnin (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)
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Pnin (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

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Pnin (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)
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Pnin (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)

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Pnin : Introduction by David Lodge
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