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From the Back Cover
Professor Timofey Pnin, late of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously perched at the heart of an American campus. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world: the ruination of his beautiful lumber-room-as-office; the removal of his teeth and the fitting of new ones; the search for a suitable boarding house; and the trials of taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has yet to master.
Wry, intelligent and moving, Pnin reveals the absurd and affecting story of one man in exile.
About the Author
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist' (William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels, stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.
Review:
4.5 out of 5
90.91% of customers are satisfied
5.0 out of 5 stars Warm, hilarious, poignant
(function() { P.when('cr-A', 'ready').execute(function(A) { if(typeof A.toggleExpanderAriaLabel === 'function') { A.toggleExpanderAriaLabel('review_text_read_more', 'Read more of this review', 'Read less of this review'); } }); })(); .review-text-read-more-expander:focus-visible { outline: 2px solid #2162a1; outline-offset: 2px; border-radius: 5px; } Nabokov's writing can make me grin in the same way as when I watch Lionel Messi or Johan Cruijf play football - the exhilaration of seeing a master in action, in complete control of his medium.Pnin is endearing and lovable, while at the same time being consistently cringeworthy or absurd. He exploits are painted vividly on a meticulously realised backdrop of Nabokovian Americana. Familiar settings like universities and diners are embued with fresh life - descriptions I may have been tempted to skim in another book bear repeated re-readings.Beauty is to be expected from Nabokov, but the strength of the humour may surprise you. The physical imagery of Pnin, with his strange, top heavy body and bald head combines with verbal humour ( "I never go in a hat even in winter") very effectively.An undercurrent to the humour is that Pnin is frequently at the wrong end of it - the reader snickers at some gaffe poor Pnin has made, but in the next passage frowns at other characters laughing at him too.It's short, but its images and scenes will leave a stronger imprint on your memory than most longer novels. I can definitely see myself rereading this in years to come.Wonderful.
4.0 out of 5 stars Erudite and Funny
This book tells of the experience of a German immigrant to America and in particular his role in running a humanities department in a third rate university. Being a retired academic myself I can relate to the hilarious situations and characters that are described. It is a very funny book and like all comedy has within it an element of tragedy. The main character has difficulty with the language and the customs of his adopted country. He is solitary, absent minded and far more deeply involved in his chosen field of learning than his students or his colleagues. It is a light and absorbing read that I can recommend to anyone whether or not they are familiar with university life.
5.0 out of 5 stars The wonderful absurdity of existence
At first I took it to be a wry comedy about a slightly laughable Russian exile in America. But it's actually about all of us -- how we get the wrong end of the stick, the confusions of memory and interpretation of the past, our inability to communicate, hopes and sadness. Everything. And a novel by Nabokov about all human existence is definitely worth your time.
3.0 out of 5 stars Ping Pong Pnin
Pnin as a novel is haunted by what it could be. There parts of this book which are simply brilliant (end of Ch. 5 in particular), but they are islands amongst the merely mediocre. That is not to say the book is bad, anything but in fact, I just seem to be holding it to higher standard on account of it being a Nabokov.Pnin as a character is one of the most likeable men in fiction, I dare you not to get completely taken in by his clumsiness, awkwardness and eccentricities. Evidently intelligent but marred by his complete lack of social skill, Nabokov creates all manner of hilarious situations for Pnin to navigate, simple non-issues are converted by Pnin into chaos and of course the most complex of problems are handled efficiently with little alarm. Pnin's turbulent backstory is revealed slowly and in some cases, darkly, but always ends up endearing Pnin further to the reader.The prose is nowhere near as fantastical as Nabokov's other work but infrequently there is the little explosion of alliteration and assonance. Pnin's particular dialect is handled extremely well and never short on comedy. The odd flirtation with French is not taken to the extremes as with H.H's fancy prose but seems only for the embellishment of more comedy.In a similar vein there is little narrative experimentation, you won't have to sit there with a notebook trying to unravel meta-narratives but you will have to contend with a particularly unreliable narrator. The narrator's voice imposes sporadically to repeatedly express disappointment, disdain and occasionally, disgust, with Pnin. All just to make you doubt the level of bias in Pnin's presentation every time the narrator intervenes. Then again it wouldn't be Nabokov without a little head-scratcher.A solid, funny (in some cases belly-achingly so) and enjoyable novel the only flaw for me is in the last chapter - I can see why its necessary but it just seemed to go too far past the end. Its worth reading just to meet and get to know Pnin.
5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps Nabokov's finest novel
Everything that one needs to know about the experience of exile is contained in this humorous elegantly written and at times elegiac novel. The tragedy and nobility of Pnin is conveyed with a lightness of touch and glorious lyricism.
4.0 out of 5 stars Original, funny, baffling
Nabokov's comic novel from 1957 centres on Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, a Russian exile teaching at the fictional Waindell College in the United States. Pnin is single, lives in rented accommodation, and his teaching position is untenured and insecure.I listened to the reading by Stefan Rudnicki for Brilliance Audio, which is on 5 CDs. It was my first encounter with Nabokov.The book left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the language is startlingly original, packed with memorable images and phrases. The skyline of New York, for example, is compared to a bar chart; Pnin is said to have discarded a football by means of 'defenestration'. It is also very funny: Pnin's unusual English proves a consistent pleasure.Yet there is something tricksy about it. Some parts of the story are told by an omniscient narrator; later, an unidentified first person narrator takes up the story. It is all rather confusing, and in the end I wasn't quite sure what happened to Pnin. Perhaps all would become clear on a second listen.Despite this reservation, it is clearly a work of quality. I would recommend it to others new to Nabokov.
Nabokov vivre!
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Correu tudo super bem
Entregaram no prazo e o livro em ótimas condições
Extremely Moving
This novel was recommended to me for its clever framing device, but I was immediately drawn in to the story by Nabokov's rich prose and his characterisations. Professor Pnin is a Russian exile - quirky but loveable, always on the outside but also somewhat eccentric in his habits. Nabokov has the extraordinary ability to write simple scenes (such as going for a dip in the lake or washing dishes) that are absolutely riveting. Who would think that a one-page description of washing dishes could be so moving?! This novel about finding one's place in the world, trying to find a home in the midst of exile, is poignant and moving.
"Pnin", por Vladimir Nabokov
Un clásico moderno. Un libro que me ha gustado enormemente. Lo recommiendo a todos los amantes de los libros que son buenos de verdad. "Pnin" es una experienca única e inolvidable. Una obra maestra.
A Nabokovian and Pninian Tragedy
Professor Timofey Pnin (Neen? Puh-nin? Pin?) of the grand Russian origin, with his Pninian antics, joins an insignificant college in America, and struggles to keep up with peculiar ways of the society. Nabokov is a genius of words, a musician of language, and in his craft, creates a language of his own to describe the misadventures of the ill-fated, our poor protagonist, an object of pity, the sweet and doomed, Pnin.What is essentially a campus novel, transforms into a personal tale of trampled hopes and desire to live on. In what is one of the (if not 'the') most hilarious opening chapters, we are introduced to our protagonist while he is on a train journey. A misfortune is identified immediately, and through a chain of struggles, pity, and failures, the novel ends with yet another misfortune. Nabokov makes the reader laugh through his wizardry of letters, while also telling a deeply moving tale of a brilliant scholar who has not failed but is failed by the world around him - by his wife, his colleagues, his friends, his employer. But with the energy and jive of a certain Mr Tambourine Man, he continues to build castles of hope from the bricks of his sufferances.In the end, the author made me feel disgusted for laughing at Pnin, for he was not the one to be laughed at but to be held in the arms, which the reader might have chosen to pierce into the pages, and subsequently get sucked only to be able to walk beside him as he lived on. This was my first work of Nabokov (I haven't read Lolita yet. Nada.) and while it was not an easy read, it was an intellectually satisfying one, opening me up for a completely unexplored area of English literature - that of the great Nabokovian tragedy.
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Pnin: Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Product origin: United Kingdom
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