''Mortals'' is the second novel by American author

Norman Rush Norman Rush (born October 24, 1933) is an American writer most of whose introspective novels and short stories are set in Botswana in the 1980s. He won the U.S. National Book Award and the 1992 ''Irish Times''/Aer Lingus International Fiction P ...

, and was published in 2003. The close third-person narrative follows Ray Finch, an American

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

CIA agent student in

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...

after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ray suspects his beloved wife Iris of an affair with Davis Morel, a Harvard-educated

eclectic medicine Eclectic medicine was a branch of American medicine that made use of botanical remedies along with other substances and physical therapy practices, popular in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. The term was coined by ...

practitioner and anti-theist with a mission to rid Africa of religion, Christianity in particular.

References

2003 American novels American spy novels Novels set in Botswana {{2000s-novel-stub