A nameless man - who has fallen out of love with life - refuses to get out of bed and becomes an unlikely local celebrity; four university friends travel to Ibiza for their first holiday away together and sex is very much on everyone's mind; a writer embarks on composing a short story at a holiday resort in the French Riviera surrounded by topless women only for the tale to take an unfortunate turn; and a young woman is desperate to find a new fiance...

The annual exchange scheme usually passes without concern. But when Philip Swallow swaps with Professor Zapp the fates play a hand, and the two academics find themselves enmeshed in a spiralling involvement on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. He makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader.