This series humorously explores cultural clashes and the academic world through the story of two professors who swap teaching positions. We follow their culture shocks and unexpected adventures in foreign lands, leading to many absurd and witty situations. The narrative touches upon themes of student unrest and differing university environments, but primarily offers a smart and amusing look at human destinies and adaptability. It's a work that entertains regardless of one's familiarity with academia.
When Phillip Swallow and Professor Morris Zapp participate in their universities' Anglo-American exchange scheme, the Fates play a hand, and each academic finds himself enmeshed in the life of his counterpart on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Nobody is immune to the exchange.
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.
Winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and short-listed for the Booker Prize, ‘Nice Work’ is a hilarious comedy of society and class misunderstandings.When Vic Wilcox, MD of Pringle’s engineering works, meets English lecturer Dr Robyn Penrose, sparks fly as their lifestyles and ideologies collide head on. But, in time, both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other’s worlds – and about themselves.'A work of immense intelligence, informative, disturbing and diverting' Observer.
'One of the very best English comic novelists of the post-war era' - "Time Out." Three brilliantly comic novels revolving around the University of Rummidge and the eventful lives of its role-swapping academics.
Set in the academic world, this collection features three humorous novels that explore the complexities of university life. In Changing Places, British lecturer Philip Swallow and American Morris Zapp swap roles, navigating cultural clashes in the late sixties. Small World follows their misadventures at international conferences, introducing a colorful ensemble of characters. Nice Work presents Dr. Robyn Penrose, who finds herself at odds with a local business director, highlighting the tensions between differing ideologies and lifestyles.