Pnin

Pnin is considered "the most delightful of Nabokov's novels", "the most immediately engaging", and possibly the funniest of all his work, so brimming with humor. Its protagonist is Professor Pnin, a Russian from the emigration who makes his living teaching half a dozen listless students who come to his classroom like someone going to see a Buster Keaton movie. But the true enemies of the ineffable and unhappy Pnin are the strange gadgets of modernity: cars, electrical appliances and other machines that, at least for him, do not exactly make life easier for him. And also the petty interests and mediocrity of his colleagues, a gang of ambitious little teachers who put his infinite patience to the test. Or the psychiatrists among whom the former wife moves, a woman who never loved him but with whom he remains imperturbable and touchingly in love. So in the end, the ridiculed Pnin emerges as an almost heroic figure, a civilized being in the midst of industrial uncivilization, the only one who still retains a remnant of human dignity.