Oxford: The Novel

Oxford: the Novel evokes both a place that is very much still there and a mood – or moods – that are now slipping into the past. An undergraduate glimpses a beautiful girl in a library and pursues her into the heart of an inner Oxford that constantly threatens to baffle and reject him. Twelve years later, as a college fellow, he writes a suitably edited account of what happened, in the form of narratives within narratives which together compose a kaleidoscopic portrayal of young people in love.

A. D. Harvey was educated at St John’s College Oxford and University (now Wolfson) College Cambridge and has taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Salerno, La Réunion and Leipzig. His books include Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars 1793 – 1945 (1992, pbk. 1994), Sex in Georgian England: Attitudes and Prejudices from the 1720s to the 1820s (1994, pbk. 2001), A Muse of Fire: Literature, Art and War (1998) and an earlier novel, Warriors of the Rainbow (2000). The latter was described by The Times as “intriguing and awe-inspiring” and by The Guardian as “a credible nightmare... weirdly compelling.”