Mortals - Hardcover

Rush, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679406220 ISBN 13: 9780679406228

Publisher: Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

The greatly anticipated new novel by Norman Rush—whose first novel, Mating, won the National Book Award and was everywhere acclaimed—is his richest work yet. It is at once a political adventure, a social comedy, and a passionate triangle. It is set in the 1990s in Botswana—the African country Rush has indelibly made his own fictional territory.

Mortals chronicles the misadventures of three ex-pat Americans: Ray Finch, a contract CIA agent, operating undercover as an English instructor in a private school, who is setting out on perhaps his most difficult assignment; his beautiful but slightly foolish and disaffected wife, Iris, with whom he is obsessively in love; and Davis Morel, an iconoclastic black holistic physician, who is on a personal mission to “lift the yoke of Christian belief from Africa.”

The passions of these three entangle them with a local populist leader, Samuel Kerekang, whose purposes are grotesquely misconstrued by the CIA, fixated as the agency is on the astonishing collapse of world socialism and the simultaneous, paradoxical triumph of radical black nationalism in South Africa, Botswana’s neighbor. And when a small but violent insurrection erupts in the wild northern part of the country, inspired by Kerekang but stoked by the erotic and political intrigues of the American trio—the outcome is explosive and often explosively funny.

Along the way, there are many pleasures. Letters from Ray’s brilliantly hostile brother and Iris’s woebegone sister provide a running commentary on contemporary life in America. Africa and Africans are powerfully evoked, and the expatriate scene is cheerfully skewered.

Through lives lived ardently in an unforgiving land, Mortals examines with wit and insight the dilemmas of power, religion, rebellion, and contending versions of liberation and love. It is a study of a marriage over time, and a man’s struggle to find his way when his private and public worlds are shifting. It is Norman Rush’s most commanding work.

About this title

Review:

Surely someone has already pointed out the irony of the surname Rush for a writer who can devote a long paragraph to uneven paving tiles. Mortals--the follow-up to Norman Rush's National Book Award-winning Mating--is a complex, unhurried tour de force; the beautifully rendered story of the end of a marriage. Ray and Iris Finch are white American expatriates in Botswana. A school principal and Milton scholar, Ray is also a contract agent for the CIA. But Ray's new boss doesn't want to see the gorgeous reports into which Finch has channeled all the talent and ambition that might otherwise have gone into poetry. He is asked to submit only his notes. This is clearly a demotion, and it occurs at the same moment that Ray's adored wife begins to develop feelings for her doctor, a charismatic black American with dangerous political ideas. Like many brilliant novels, Mortals has an Achilles heel. The book is too long by as much as 200 pages. Those pages aren't without interest, and if--like the author--you find the narrative voice of this novel compelling in itself, you will not mind the lengthy anecdotes, hair-splitting, and digressions that Rush indulges in. Other readers may do a little judicious skimming in the second half of the book and still experience the pleasures of this masterful and psychologically acute novel. --Regina Marler

From the Back Cover:

“Marvelous . . . a portrait of a marriage and a political thriller . . . Rush merges the two successfully and somewhat shockingly.”
–Time Magazine

“Rush’s first novel, Mating, was magnificent. Mortals, as hard as it is to believe, is even better.”
–Erik Tokells, Fortune

“Marvelous . . . One wants to call Rush the best writer of his generation, but one imagines that he would reject the category.”
–John Homans, New York Magazine

“Rush has now produced three books so full of brainwork, contour, sinew and laser light that we don’t want to leave home without him.”
–John Leonard, cover, New York Times Book Review

“Rush has a canny understanding of Africa, a profound appreciation for the fine points of romantic love, a muscular style of description, and an eye for character [that is] frighteningly sharp.”
–The Economist

“A surprisingly old-fashioned plot-driven spy yarn, set against an expansive backdrop of unresolved romantic and intellectual conflict.”
–Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post Book World

“Hugely complex, deeply intelligent . . . No review can do justice to the impressive quality of the thought or the multifarious nature of the ideas [here].”
–William Boyd, L.A. Weekly

“Delightful . . .as Ray and Iris slowly tumble toward the recognition of real trouble in their marriage, the book illuminates them with a playful, intelligent light that any adult will find useful to see by.”
–Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

"Ambitious and spellbinding . . . Rush's words [dance] on the boundary between prose and poetry . . .[full of] thought-provoking, smart and often hilarious nuggets."
–Molly Knight, The Baltimore Sun

“Like Cervantes and Garcia Marquez, Rush achieves an overall effect of delirious comedy–dizzying, audacious, strange, and often sad, informed by the gravest of concerns.”
–James Gibbons, BookForum

“An astonishing accomplishment . . . a 700-page detonation of talent that threatens to incinerate competitors for miles around.”
–Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor

“Wild and wonderful . . . Whether the matter under scrutiny is marital wrangling or guerilla rebellion, Rush’s observations are brutally accurate–and funny.”
–Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

“Brilliant, moving and dense . . . The reader is not likely to find a better novel this year.”
–Adam Kirsch, The New York Sun

“Rush is a real seer, and he captivates us with his audacious fictional vision. He has given us masterful slices both of Africa’s indelible beauty and of its on-going chaos.”
–Lisa Shea, Elle Magazine

“An enthralling mix of intimacy and politics, sex and war, commitment and cynicism, literature and farce. A huge, stirring novel.”
–Booklist

“The richness of Rush’s vision sweeps the reader into his brilliantly observed world.”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Absorbing . . . For readers hankering after a novel of ideas, it doesn’t get much better than this.”
–Jennifer Egan, The Observer

“Brilliant . . . The reader is immersed in an exotic culture and its political and social history rendered vivid by Rush’s prose.”
–Gordon Weaver, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Mortals envelops the reader in a manner that modern fiction too rarely attempts . . . no one caught in its sweep will want the experience to end.”
–Don McLeese, Chicago Sun-Times

“Intensely readable . . . Rush achieves. . . the sort of bold plotting more familiarly encountered in the great novels of Dostoevski or Dickens.”
–James Leigh, San Diego Union-Tribune

“An experience not to be missed.”
–Kirkus starred review

“Mortals is a deeply serious, deeply ambitious, deeply successful book . . . Reading [passages from it], one recalls what fiction can supremely do with the mind, and how very rare is this kind of mastery, let alone this preoccupation, in current American writing.”
–James Wood, The New Republic

“Rush’s prose, wit, and insight provide . . . many delights . . . Both major and minor characters are drawn in broad strokes, and despite the novel’s serious moral concerns, an element of humor infuses almost every encounter.”
–Steven Yarborough, The Oregonian

“Rich and densely textured . . . a thriller-like plot . . . and a dazzling array of intermingling thematic movements. Indeed the sheer energy and ambition of Mortals seems to mock its creator’s earthbound status.”
–John Freeman, Charlotte News and Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0679406220
• ISBN 13: 9780679406228
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 736