Light at Midnight

About the Book

Light at Midnight chronicles Matthew A. Fike’s adventures and misadventures as a founding faculty member of the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), the first American liberal arts institution in Central or Eastern Europe. During his self-imposed exile, Fike loved well, fought hard, enjoyed terrific friendships, deepened his pedagogical and scholarly portfolios, bought and lived on a high-end blue water sailboat, experienced a minor psychic awakening, visited the afterlife, and traveled to Moscow to find romance. In the course of these events, however, his exile from traumatic experiences in the Midwest became A European Journey to greater self-understanding. This book thus provides not only an eyewitness to a key moment in the history of higher education but also a well-written, brutally honest, and often hilarious account of a young man’s coming of age.

About the Author

Matthew A. Fike is a graduate of Hope College and the University of Michigan, where he received a Ph.D. in English in 1988. After spending 1991–2000 working for the American University in Bulgaria, he moved to Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, where he is now an associate professor and teaches courses in the human experience, critical thinking, and British literature. His previous publications include Spenser’s Underworld in the 1590 Faerie Queene, A Jungian Study of Shakespeare: The Visionary Mode, and numerous articles on British literature, American literature, and pedagogy.