Ezra's Bookshelf

Mating

by Norman Rush · 498 pages · ~9 hrs

Fiction

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Norman Rush's novel presents one of literature's great intellectual romances. The unnamed narrator, an American woman pursuing anthropological fieldwork in Botswana, becomes obsessed with Nelson Denoon, an enigmatic development theorist rumored to have created a successful matriarchal community in the Kalahari Desert. Her pursuit of Denoon becomes the novel's driving force, as she navigates the expatriate social world of Gaborone while gathering intelligence about this legendary figure. When she finally reaches Denoon's settlement of Tsau, the novel opens into an exploration of utopian possibility. Can a community organized around feminist principles flourish? Can two equally formidable intellects find lasting love? Rush, who spent years in Botswana as a Peace Corps director, renders the African landscape and society with deep familiarity. But the novel's true achievement is its voice—the narrator's relentless intelligence, her self-awareness about her own obsessiveness, and her willingness to examine the contradictions in her desires. The book treats ideas with the same seriousness as plot, engaging with development economics, feminist theory, and the nature of romantic attachment. It is simultaneously a love story, an adventure, and a philosophical inquiry into whether equality between partners is possible.

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