Virtual Morality

The scene is Denver, home of the mighty Western University and its warring faculty, presided over by an ambitious president dreaming of tall, new buildings and by a hapless dean. When a female instructor in the Womyn's Studies course insults a male student and is insulted in turn (with a "trans-general epithet"), the student is expelled by the hastily organized undergraduate oversight board. Seeking justice for the expelled student is Parker Thompson, the young, morally challenged star of the city's top law firm, who struggles to advance his legal career - and save whatever is left of his soul. Christopher Hill's first novel is a scathing satire of academic hubris and a disturbing portait of American society grasping for a moral compass in an age that has abandoned tradition. Hill's voice, rising from the very bowels of the beast he is describing, is funny, incisive, fresh, and devastating.

Winner of Pushcart's 18th Annual Editors' Book Award, this first novel is a savage and hilarious dissection of contemporary campus life.

Christopher Hill was for many years tutor and then Master of Balliol College, Oxford.