Changing Places

Changing Places (published in 1975) was the first "campus novel" written by British novelist David Lodge.

Changing Places tells the story of the six-month academic exchange between fictional universities located in Rummidge (which is apparently modelled on Birmingham in England) and Euphoria (apparently modelled on California). The two academics taking part in the exchange are both aged 40, but appear at first to otherwise have little in common, mainly because of the differing academic systems of their native countries.

The English participant, Philip Swallow, is a very conventional and conformist British academic, and somewhat in awe of the American way of life. By contrast the American, Morris Zapp, is a top-ranking American professor who only agrees to go to Rummidge because his wife agrees to postpone long-threatened divorce proceedings on condition that he move out of the marital home for six months. Zapp is at first both contemptuous of, and amused by, what he perceives as the amateurism of British academia.

As the exchange progresses, however, both Swallow and Zapp find that they begin to fit in surprisingly well to their new environments. Both even consider remaining permanaently (although both ultimately return home at the end of the exchange).

Changing Places is an extremely amusing novel, with serious undercurrents. A successful sequel, Small World, was published in 1984.