Mating A Novel (National Book Award Winner) [Paperback]

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 good 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 both a quest and an exuberant comedy of manners, a book that explores the deepest canyons of eros even as it asks large questions about the good society, the geopolitics of poverty, and the baffling mystery of what men and women really want.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.NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER

“Exhilarating . . . vigorous and luminous. . . . Few books evoke so eloquently the state of love at its apogee.” —The New York Times Book Review

The introduction, discussion questions, author biography, and suggested reading list that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Norman Rush’s National Book Award–winning novelMating.

1.Matingis narrated in the voice of a woman, a graduate student in nutritional anthropology. Why might Norman Rush have made this particular narrative choice? How convincing is his depiction of a woman’s consciousness and point of view? Why is it important that the story be told by a woman? By an anthropologist?

2. The narrator describes herself as suffering frol#"