A young rogue resolves to reinvent himself. Through hard work and perseverance, he attains the ability to pass for a respectable member of the bourgeoisie, to ape their mannerisms, and simulate their enthusiasms. Thus equipped, he enters a respected university. His enjoyment of his new academic milieu - the material comforts, the feminine company - is immense, but as he becomes integrated into their social structures, he begins to discern the deviousness and dishonesty of the mandarins who compose this privileged group. The discovery leads him through a maze of deception, right wing philosophy, seduction, and violence. Internally at war with the malevolence that surrounds him, his choices are few: he can rely on the tools of his life of respectability - or he can fall back on the skills that he attained and perfected in his previous existence.