Pnin / Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov.

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.

Pnin is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It was published in 1957. The novel features a circular narrative that centers around Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, a Russian immigrant and college professor who struggles with his personal and professional relationships. Nabokov drew on his experience as a professor at various universities in the U.S. to write the book, with many critics concludin that Pnin's fictional Waindell College was a thinly-veiled version of Cornell University. Although Nabokov would ultimately become best-known for Lolita, Pnin was the novel that first brought him widespread acclaim in the U.S. The book received a second printing within a week of publication and was critically acclaimed; it was also a nominee for the 1958 National Book Award.