Pnin (1953–1955, published 1957) is the fourth English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the life story of Russian emigrant professor Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, who teaches Russian at an American university, but is comically at odds with English, which coupled with his funny appearance, absent-mindedness and clumsiness in handling things turns him into a curious local attraction. The title character of the book - unlucky, eccentric, touchingly absurd - a kind of Don Quixote of the university town of Weindel - gradually reveals itself to the reader as a complex, multifaceted personality, in whose fate moments of supreme happiness and moments of genuine tragedy are combined, whose life, like any human life, forms a bizarre mixture of indescribable charm and inescapable sadness...