Under the leadership of the charismatic Dr Al Eschler, a backlash is being spearheaded against advancing third wave Feminism, in the heart of millennial London. Patrick, a computer systems analyst with his own store of relationship troubles, falls under the influence, and joins the Institute, aka the Bastard Club.

Despite Patrick’s intellectual gifts, even his native scepticism gets worked loose under the glare of Bastard Theory and the mind-warping rigours of the training. His class at the Institute presents an eclectic mix of men’s issues and neuroses, as they battle through strategies, complex and subtle systems of manipulation, Zen arts of chatting up and reporting in.

The American, the ‘Boss’, has the mission and the method. Except Patrick has met and is in pursuit of Lillian, a bright and utterly desirable broadsheet journalist, on whom he must practise and develop his Bastard skills. As his interest in her becomes more compelling, straying even into the ‘heresy’ of love, it becomes increasingly unlikely that this affair, and all that’s riding on it, can work out well…