swap_horiz Zuleika Dobson Alternatives

1

Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis’s *Lucky Jim* chronicles the chaotic life of James Baldwin, a young lecturer at Bretton Hall College in Yo...

Comedy 1950S Academic Satire UK University

9.2 Excellent

2

Gaudy Night

1935 mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers set at fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford, in which Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wims...

Mystery 1930S Oxford Dorothy Sayers

8.6 Great

3

Changing Places

1975 novel by David Lodge in which a British and an American professor swap universities for a semester, the first book...

Comedy 1970S Academic Satire UK Us University

8.4 Great

4

Decline and Fall

Evelyn Waugh's 1928 debut novel satirizing English public school and university life through the comic misadventures of...

Satire Comedy 1920S Boarding School

8.3 Great

5

Straight Man

1997 comic novel by Richard Russo about the reluctant acting chair of an English department at a financially struggling...

Comedy 1990S Academic Satire Departmental Politics

8.2 Great

6

The Confusions of Young Törless

Robert Musil's 1906 Austrian debut novel set at a military boarding school, in which a boy observes and participates in...

Coming Of Age Literary Fiction Edwardian Austrian Military School

8.2 Great

7

Small World

1984 campus novel by David Lodge satirizing the international academic conference circuit, the second Rummidge novel and...

Comedy 1980S Academic Satire David Lodge

8.1 Great

8

Pictures from an Institution

1954 satirical novel by poet Randall Jarrell set at a fictional progressive American women's college, skewering academic...

Comedy 1950S Literary Fiction Academic Satire

8.1 Great

9

Beneath the Wheel

Hermann Hesse's 1906 German novel depicting a gifted student psychologically broken by the brutal competitive pressures...

Coming Of Age Tragic Edwardian Hesse

7.9 Good

10

Porterhouse Blue

Tom Sharpe's 1974 satirical novel set at a fictional Cambridge college called Porterhouse lampoons English academic trad...

Comedy 1970S Cambridge Academic Satire

7.9 Good

11

Leaven of Malice

Robertson Davies's 1954 novel, second in the Salterton trilogy, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and turns on a...

Comedy 1950S Literary Fiction Robertson Davies

7.8 Good

12

Tempest-Tost

Robertson Davies's 1951 debut novel, first in the Salterton trilogy, is set in a small Ontario city and revolves around...

Comedy 1950S Literary Fiction Robertson Davies

7.7 Good

13

Solar

Solar is a satirical campus novel by British author Ian McEwan, published in 2010, following a Nobel laureate physicist...

Comedy Literary Fiction 2010S UK Academic Scientist

7.7 Good

14

Moo

1995 satirical novel by Jane Smiley set at fictional Moo University, a Midwestern land-grant institution, skewering acad...

Comedy 1990S Academic Satire Us University

7.5 Good

15

That Hideous Strength

C.S. Lewis's 1945 novel, third in the Space Trilogy, set at a fictional English university where a sinister technocratic...

Fantasy Satire 1940S Fictional UK College

7.5 Good

16

Crampton Hodnet

Barbara Pym's early novel written in the 1930s and published posthumously in 1985, satirizing the genteel social world o...

Comedy 1980S Oxford Academic Satire

7.4 Good

17

The Light and the Dark

C.P. Snow's 1947 Strangers and Brothers novel portrays a brilliant, morally conflicted Cambridge classicist whose gifts...

Literary Fiction 1940S Cambridge Academic Milieu

7.4 Good

18

The Ask

Sam Lipsyte's 2010 satirical novel following a failed artist employed in a university development office who is forced t...

Comedy 2010S Academic Satire Us University Development

7.3 Good

19

Eating People Is Wrong

1959 debut novel by Malcolm Bradbury set at a provincial English university, following a liberal professor through awkwa...

Comedy 1950S Academic Satire UK University

7.2 Good

20

The Sleep of Reason

C.P. Snow's 1968 Strangers and Brothers novel, loosely inspired by the Moors murders, examines the limits of liberal hum...

1960S Literary Fiction UK University Academic Milieu

7.2 Good