Foreign Affairs

Summary

A comic novel of manners that follows two American academics on sabbatical in London: a fiftyish female folklorist studying children's rhymes and a young male professor adrift after a marital break. Lurie uses their parallel romances to skewer Anglo-American snobberies, generational difference, and the romantic illusions academics bring to the field. The book is admired for its dry wit and its sharp, sympathetic portrait of midlife self-knowledge.