A brilliant, perky novella about the foibles of Professor Timofey Pnin, an eccentric Russian teacher at a school in New England. ‘Pninian’ should really be part of our daily vocabulary; it would describe the endearingly pedantic, hopelessly romantic or alarmingly bald… Nabokov’s prose is eye-wateringly good, the story by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. (Also available in hardback).