Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a
lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous
Liza: "A genius needs to keep so much in store and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself
as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend
yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.
