Small World
Synopsis
Small World tells the tale of Persse McGarrigle and his pursuit of the beautiful Angelica, as well as the quests of professors, critics and academic hangers-on for their various brass rings. Set in literary conferences held at universities, Small World finds Persse flying all over the world after Angelica as she goes from conference to conference, culminating at the annual MLA conference in New York. Almost equally important, however, is the political jockeying among professors and critics for the UNESCO chair of Literary Theory, which involves no work and pays $100,000, tax-free.
Author Biography
Professor David Lodge was born in South London in January 1935. He is a graduate and Honorary Fellow of University College London. He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham, where he taught from 1960 until 1987, when he retired to write full-time. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Chairman of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989. In 1998 he was awarded the CBE for his services to literature. David Lodge’s novels include Changing Places, for which he was awarded both the Hawthornden Prize and the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize; How Far Can You Go?, which was Whitbread Book of the Year in 1980; Small World, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984; Nice Work, which won the 1988 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Paradise News; and Therapy, regional winner and finalist for the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize. He has written numerous books of literary criticism, including The Language of Fiction and After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism.
