While in Africa to work on her thesis project, an American anthropologist falls for Nelson Denoon, the charismatic intellectual who is rumored to have founded a highly secretive unorthodox utopian society.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Is love between equals possible? This modern classic is a delightful intellectual love story that explores the deepest canyons of romantic love even as it asks large questions about society, geopolitics, and the mystery of what men and women really want.
“Luminous . . . Few books evoke the state of love at its apogee.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The best rendering of erotic politics . . . since D.H. Lawrence. . . . The voice of Rush’s narrator is immediate, instructive and endearing.”—The New York Review of Books
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
The narrator of this splendidly expansive novel of high intellect and grand passion is an American anthropologist at loose ends in the South African republic of Botswana. She has a noble and exacting mind, a compelling waist, and a busted thesis project. She also has a yen for Nelson Denoon, a charismatic intellectual who is rumored to have founded a secretive and unorthodox utopian society in a remote corner of the Kalahari—one in which he is virtually the only man.
What ensues is an exhilarating quest and an exuberant comedy of manners: “A dryly comic love story about grown-up people who take the life of the mind seriously.” —Newsweek
Winner of National Book Awards 1991
“Exhilarating…vigorous and luminous…Few books evoke the state of love at its apogee.” –The New York Times Book Review
“The best rendering of erotic politics…since D.H. Lawrence…a marvelous novel, one in which a resolutely independent voice claims new imaginative territory…The voice of Rush’s narrator is immediate, instructive and endearing.” –The New York Review of Books
“Witty, raunchy…prodigiously aspiring…a remarkable book…His protagonist is a memorable female character: a continually shifting prism that revolves from dashing to needy, from witty to morose…wonderfully varied and pungent.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A dryly comic love story about grown-up people who take the life of the mind seriously and know they sometimes sound silly…Mating is state-of-the-art artifice.” –Newsweek
“It draws the reader steadily in. Not toward the heart of darkness but toward brilliant illumination.” -The New York Times
“Bold and ambitious…delightful, provocative.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“Brilliantly written…utterly sui generis!...Rush has alerted us to the transfiguring power of passion…He deploys the narrative voice with…brio…wit and persuasiveness.” –Mirabella
“An audaciously clever novel with substance as well as flash.” –Detroit Free Press
Norman Rush is the author of four works of fiction: Whites, a collection of stories, and three novels, Subtle Bodies, Mating, and Mortals. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories. Mating was the recipient of the National Book Award. Rush and his wife live in Rockland County, New York.
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