Pnin is a gentle comic novel about Timofey Pnin, a Russian emigre professor teaching at a small American college in the 1950s. Awkward with English, absent-minded about machines and customs, he is mocked by colleagues, yet he keeps a stubborn dignity and a loyal heart. Through episodes of lectures, rented rooms, parties and old loves, the book gradually reveals the losses of exile that lie beneath the humour. It is one of Nabokov's warmest works, mixing satire of academic life with real tenderness toward an unlikely, memorable hero.