<p>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 ¿<br><br>¿Absolutely contemporary - perhaps even prophetic.'' <b>Joyce Carol Oates</b><br>¿Remarkable ¿ A book about innocence.¿ <b>Simon Garfield</b><br>''A cryptic literary manifesto [about] discovering a literary personality, and the consolation art can provide.'' <b>Andrew Motion</b></p>