Pnin: Vladimir Nabokov

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.