Nancy Lemann News Today

There and back: the author of Lives of the Saints discusses her career, religion, and influences

On Balzac and archival footage of Muhammad Ali.

“I was already praying: please let me have that disease where you hear a piano playing Mozart nonstop.”

New York Times: Novel a hit among younger readers thinking about romantic relationships.

Norman Rush’s “Mating” has achieved handshake status among younger readers thinking seriously about romantic relationships.

“Mating,” published in 1991, usually finds its evangelists by word-of-mouth. For some, its plot points can be a tough sell: An unnamed graduate student in Botswana pursues an American anthropologist, Nelson Denoon, who is trying to form a matriarchal society in a desert village.

Katherine Champagne had never heard of “Mating,” the award-winning novel by Norman Rush, until one afternoon in 2020, when she popped into a

“Youth is so angst-filled. Youth is just all-angst-all-the-time.”

“No Lemann scene is complete without several characters in various stages of disrepair or subtle agitation.”

”Though she is describing us, we feel she is looking at us from another time, through the lens of the ages.“