One of the dangers of academia is that ego interferes with the formation and sharing of knowledge. Colleagues are enemies, discussion is manipulation, subject matter is weaponised. British author James Cahill studied at Oxford and Cambridge, worked at a gallery in London, and recently joined King’s College London, but his first novel, Tiepolo Blue, is burdened with a feeling that these environments have few redeeming features. In a different tone, the novel could have been a satire, but if Cahill exposes his characters to ridicule, it is to make us recognise the sadness and loneliness behind the veneer of dignity. Cahill’s vision is tragic, not absurd. In Tiepolo Blue, love, for persons as much as for intellectual subjects, is stifled by power plays and abominable behaviour. Cahill’s academia is self-defeating because it poisons self-knowledge.