David Lodge

Veteran rivals for an exclusive academic chair (recently endowed with $100,000 a year) do scholarly battle with each other in what the Washington Post Book World called a "delectable comedy of bad manners . . . infused with a rare creative exuberance". From the author of the award-winning Changing Places.

An Academic Romance

Small World

Ivan Shiel

I found this a very irritating book. There are some great bits here, but this was far outweighed by annoyance. The central problem is that it is high in extraordinary incidences and coincidences. This removes the feeing that anything is at stake. Also, there are a lot of characters but I’m left wondering why. 

I still think Lodge is an excellent writer but I feel the point of this book was lost on me.

Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle and the lovely Angelica are the jet-propelled academics who are on the move, in the air and on the make in David Lodge's satirical Small World. It is a world of glamorous travel and high excitement, where stuffy lecture rooms are swapped for lush corners of the globe, and romance is in the air...

Elaine

Had to read this for one of my Literature classes. It was quite interesting at the beginning but fell flat or me in the middle. At the ending the action piked back up again, but it wasn't necessarily fast paced.
It was an ok read and especially for grad students a bit of an eye-opener on the academic world...

Hazel Evans

Witty, silly and intelligent, this book is both amusing and enlightening, and despite it's all-over-the-place 'plot' (if it can even be called as such) Lodge keeps you gripped from start to finish. Would recommend to anyone.

Small World An Academic Romance

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