her friends dress up in Vince's collection of Nazi uniforms and medals. Don breaks up this nightmarish scene and reveals that Vince has had a sexual relationship with Rudolf, possibly extorting sexual favours in return for help denazifying Rudolf's father. An epilogue takes place in a motel in California, where Timothy, now a thirty-year-old academic in Environmental Studies, and his wife and sons are visiting Kath, who's still single. It's revealed that Vince and Greg were both homosexual and their disappearance in Berlin was an attempt to defect to the Soviets. Don is now a professor and has been married and divorced. Timothy reflects on how lucky he is to have a good career and a loving family when things have not gone so well for others. Origins The most autobiographical of Lodge's novels, it reflects the author's own rite of passage in Heidelberg visiting a young aunt, though he points out a number of differences between his visit and what happened in the novel. The naive tone of the narration, especially that of Timothy's early childhood, alters as he matures. In the afterword to the 1984 edition, Lodge explains the novel's origins, as well as the serious problems with the typesetting of the earlier edition. See also Bildungsroman 1970 British novels Novels by David Lodge Novels set during World War II Macmillan Publishers books British bildungsromans