Profesor strasti

Kepesh, the son of a hotel owner in New Jersey, grew up surrounded by eccentric characters such as the artist Herbie Bratasky, a master of comic imitations of bodily sounds, which shaped his earlier worldview. In his college days, David shares a room with a lazy, gay fellow who avoids the military and engages in masturbation, which heightens David's insecurities.

He is tormented by lust for female colleagues, but his rudely direct compliments alienate them, leaving him without successful relationships. With a Fulbright scholarship, he travels to London, where he meets two sensual Swedish women, Birgitta and Elisabeth, whose adventures open up a new world of free sex.

Returning to America, he moves to California and begins a relationship with Helena, an ambitious woman with a past of promiscuity from Hong Kong and Asia. Their love suffers from David's inability to express emotions beyond the physical: Helen feels unloved, rejecting domestic roles, while he takes on housework while teaching and writing about Chekhov. They separate, and David moves to New York, where he teaches literature, turning his lectures into personal confessions of desire, comparing his life to the works of Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

In psychoanalysis, he explores the depths of his insecurities, and a trip to Prague, Kafka's hometown, brings a dream of Kafka's former prostitute inviting him for an intimate examination, symbolizing his obsession with literature and desire. The novel explores the conflict between physical lust and emotional maturity, the influence of literature on personal growth, and the American dream through the prism of the sexual freedoms of the 1970s.