A Spy in the House of Love

Norman Rush is something of an oddity in the world of American letters, a world that sometimes seems to be populated solely by wunderkinder and éminences grises. Born in 1933, Rush worked as a teacher and a rare-books dealer and did a stint with the Peace Corps in Africa before he finally published his first novel, Mating , in 1991. It promptly won the U.S. National Book Award. Rush then resumed his silence. Now, 12 years later, we have the remarkable Mortals , which gives us the late-blooming Rush as challenging and surprising and uncompromising as ever.

Ray Finch, our...