Michaelmas term, 1940. 18-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable ''friend'', and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange world …‘Absolutely contemporary - perhaps even prophetic.'' Joyce Carol Oates‘Remarkable … A book about innocence.’ Simon Garfield''A cryptic literary manifesto [about] discovering a literary personality, and the consolation art can provide.'' Andrew Motion