Higher Learning

Truman Avran is an alien on Earth investigating the relations between university education and political power for an intergalactic peace commission. He travels to San Francisco, Berkeley, New England and France observing local cultures and systems of education. In the course of his terrestrial investigations, the space traveler reveals his own contradictions and ironically becomes Everyman, a Candide-like character whose encounters with Earthlings and other aliens call into question his own perceptions and assumptions. This comic but serious novel in the traditions of Kingsley Amos and Jonathan Swift hovers between science fiction, philosophy and social analysis in its account of an alien's journey into the heart and soul of a rich and contradictory world.