Changing Places

We move up a generation to the next “classic,” an equally entertaining satire that now sets the American university against the British. Two professors exchange roles for an academic year, swapping not only courses but eventually also students, colleagues, and (spoiler alert!) spouses. You get to look at each place through the eyes of the other—starting with the sunny American campus (based on Berkeley) against the damp British one—which is as jarring as it is revealing. Lodge beautifully melds the academic, the intellectual, and the personal, so the story grips you personally even as it stimulates and entertains. I read… show more.

The academic life provides plenty of opportunity for hanky-panky, and this delightful novel, in which two distinguished professors participate in an exchange program involving more than academic responsibilities, has plenty of it. The first leg of a wonderful academic-life trilogy, this novel is anchored in the self-importance that can eat at the edges, even the core, of successful faculty members.