A Matter of Degrees

About the Book

A Matter of Degrees: A Campus Fantasy is a modern retelling of the Parsifal legend of the innocent, unsuspecting youth who acquires wisdom and experience through a series of adventures and misadventures. Set on two American campuses, one a typical state university, the other a somewhat bizarre private institution, in this contemporary version Percival­Percy to his friends­encounters a series of unexpected challenges that test him to the limit. With his foreign background­though American, due to his father's work with the CIA in Europe, brought up in Germany­Percy is bewildered by the strangeness and complexities of campus life in America. Complicating Percy's existence is the CIA/FBI rivalry at the university and the machinations of Caspar Klingsor, a mysterious stranger bent on changing the American university scene. Percy is aided by Michel Gournamond, an older professor, who guides him through the intricacies not only of academia but also the process of growing into manhood.

This fast-paced novel is told with humor and the insight of the author's firsthand experience. A Matter of Degrees: A Campus Fantasy shows a sympathetic understanding of the behind-the-scenes conflicts inherent on any campus­hiring, promotion, publications, inter-personal relations, and a host of others­seen through the eyes of an unsuspecting but sensitive outsider. Hilt's novel eschews preaching, but through wit and example offers some timely suggestions as to personalizing the impersonal campus. The reader is invited to enjoy a well-paced narrative and to find out how Percy fares in a world he could never have imagined.

About the Author

Douglas Hilt, a transplant from his native England, has taught at three American universities and for 16 years chaired departments of Foreign Languages and European Languages and Literature. A recipient of Woodrow Wilson and Fulbright awards, among other honors he was appointed to the Georgia Consortium for International Education and was twice named Principal Humanities Scholar at the University of Hawaii. He has published several books as well as numerous articles and essays for both academia and the general public. His publications reflect his cross-cultural, multilingual, and interdisciplinary interests. He is fluent in several European languages and wrote his Master's thesis in Spanish at the University of the Americas in Mexico City before obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. Professional areas in which he has taught and lectured include Comparative Literature, Biography, and Exile Literature. As Professor Emeritus he has turned his hand to fiction that combines imaginative humor with a varied background and brings to his work an original slant. The present book is one of these, as well as his recent Feathers , Fur and Fins.