Best Professorial
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Vladimir Nabokov’s *Pale Fire* is a 1962 novel centered around a disastrous academic expedition to a remote American university. The story unfolds through a lengthy, intricately crafted poem and its accompanying critical notes written by Charles Kinbote, a displaced scholar. Kinbote's commentary rev...
John Williams’ *Stoner* chronicles the life of Edwin “Stoner” Grant, a Midwestern student at Midwestern State Teachers College in the 1960s. The novel details his unremarkable yet profoundly affecting academic and personal journey as an English professor. It's notable for its realistic portrayal of...
Kingsley Amis’s *Lucky Jim* chronicles the chaotic life of James Baldwin, a young lecturer at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire. Published in 1954, the novel satirizes academic culture and provincial society through Baldwin's misadventures. It established itself as a foundational work within British...
Vladimir Nabokov’s *Pnin* chronicles the life of Timofey Pnin, a disoriented and melancholic Russian professor teaching literature at Waindell College in the 1950s. The novel explores themes of displacement, intellectual isolation, and the challenges of adapting to American academic culture. It is n...
Robertson Davies's 1970 novel, first in the Deptford trilogy, is narrated by a retired Canadian schoolmaster reflecting on how a thrown snowball shaped three lives.
Philip Roth's 2001 novella in which aging literature professor David Kepesh becomes obsessively entangled with a young Cuban-American student.
1952 novel by Mary McCarthy set at fictional progressive Jocelyn College, in which a professor falsely claims Communist ties to shield himself from dismissal.
Philip Roth's 1977 novel tracing English professor David Kepesh's erotic and intellectual development from college through a disillusionment in Prague.
Ethan Canin's 2016 novel tracing the brilliant but self-destructive arc of a Fields Medal–winning mathematician and the long damage he inflicts on his family across generations.
2000 novel by Francine Prose about a creative writing professor at a small New England college whose infatuation with a student destroys him, echoing the 1930 German film.
Philip Roth's 1983 novel, third in the Zuckerman Bound trilogy, in which novelist Nathan Zuckerman is paralyzed by back pain and considers abandoning writing.
Iris Murdoch's 1957 novel in which a married schoolmaster at an English boys' school develops an infatuation with a young female portrait painter.
