Mortals

The Story

At once a political adventure, a portrait of a passionate but imperiled marriage, and an acrobatic novel of ideas,Mortalsmarks Norman RushÆs return to the territory he has made his own, the southern African nation of Botswana. Nobody here is entirely what he claims to be. Ray Finch is not just a middle-aged Milton scholar but a CIA agent. His lovely and doted-upon wife Iris is also a possible adulteress. And Davis Morel, the black alternative physician who is treating her--while undertaking a quixotic campaign to de-Christianize Africaùmay also be her lover. As a spy, the compulsively literate Ray ought to have no trouble confirming his suspicions. But thereÆs the distraction of actual spying. Most of all, thereÆs the problem of love, which Norman Rush anatomizes in all its hopeless splendor in a novel that would have delighted Milton, Nabokov, and Graham Greene.