The very liberal Kirks are throwing a party. For Howard Kirk, liberal sociology lecturer whose deluded sense of heroism has him moving seductively around the university campus, the net must be perfectly cast: ‘if you want to have something that’s genuinely unstructured, you have to plan it carefully’. Kirk embodies the contradictions of the era’s intellectual and political climate. As he navigates complex relationships with his wife, his students and his colleagues, he pursues personal and professional agendas under the guise of progressive thought.
Malcolm Bradbury’s disconcerting, provocative and savagely funny satire of academic life lit up the 1970s; intolerance, self-interest, marital fragility, tensions surrounding gender, sex and promiscuity, politics, power and radicalism… It was a book for then and it is one for now.

‘Exhilarating… A book which captures for all time the spirit of an age’ – Margaret Drabble

‘Extremely witty… Bradbury writes brilliantly’ – The New York Times