In the original dustsheet. Blue cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

Brilliantly funny satire set in a contemporary American university. Deep in the wheatfields of the American midwest, Moo University is in a state of disarray… In this witty and biting comedy of manners, Jane Smiley turns her wryly perceptive eye towards a community where men and women, the innocent and the cynical, thinkers and careerists, live and work together – in complete disharmony. ‘Satire on a grand scale, a microscopic examination of contemporary American mores conducted with great wit and gracious indulgence for human frailty …Trying to describe this book’s marvellous variety is like trying to describe London to someone who has never been there. The only appropriate exhortation is “Read it.”‘

Review: It’s a year of ups and downs for the students and staff of Moo University. Moo is in the Midwest and is known more for its farming studies than its liberal arts – which is no bad thing when most of the students grew up on farms. But it’s more than a little frustrating for academic staff members who want to make their careers. Moo is quite a sleepy place until its sleazy economics professor recommends the destruction of virgin rain forests to build a gold mine. Suddenly Moo is on the map! This is a great story with compelling characters and lots of individual stories which brilliantly weave into the fabric of one year of academic life.

Author Jane Smiley (born September 26, 1949) is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991). Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from Community School and from John Burroughs School. She obtained a BA in literature at Vassar College (1971), then earned an MA (1975), MFA (1976), and PhD (1978) from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996 she was a Professor of English at Iowa State University, teaching undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops, and continuing to teach there even after relocating to California.