Pnin HC25 When his pet woodlouse won’t

When his pet woodlouse won’t wake up one day

Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind

and ultimately perfected American style

as signs for mankind to reflect upon

Helene Hanff read aloud these stories of her life in New York for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour

Pnin HC25 When his pet woodlouse won’tProfessor 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,