Stepping Westward

At the height of the 1960s, a British writer accepts an academic post in America for a year that he'll never forget

English author James Walker has three books to his name, each greeted with middling success and then promptly forgotten. But his rsum is significant enough to earn him a yearlong appointment at Benedict Arnold University as the American college's writer in residence.

At Benedict Arnold, Walker is something of a celebrity-a firebrand of 1960s British literary culture whose work, though perhaps met with shrugs at home, is the subject of vibrant scholarly criticism among American academics. Walker, of course, is not quite what some were expecting, and culture clashes abound as he encounters the tropes of American academia in the sixties. Fusty, buttoned-up professors, spirited advocates of free love, and aggressively ambitious colleagues collide to ensure that Walker's year in America will be anything but ordinary.

"Mr. Bradbury's observations, nestled into the dialogue and roosting on the transitional asides, are devastatingly quotable." -Kirkus Reviews

"[Stepping Westward] neatly captures the cultural preoccupations of its day." -The New York Times Book Review

"A satirist of great assurance and accomplishment." -The Observer

"Malcolm Bradbury is a satirist of great assurance and accomplishment." -The Observer

"Highly entertaining." -Margaret Drabble

Malcolm Bradbury (1932-2000) was a well-known novelist, critic, and academic, as well as founder of the creative writing department at the University of East Anglia. His seven novels include The History Man and Rates of Exchange, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Bradbury was knighted in 2000 for services to literature and died the same year.