BOOKS . . . MASAI DREAMING

The satirical possibilities in a novel about the making of a Hollywood adventure movie with a Holocaust hook are unnerving. And Justin Cartwright often becomes the target of his own satire. The novel (Random House; 287 pages; $23) of a movie producer determined to tell the story of a striking French anthropologist whose work among the Masai tribesmen, and whose fate at the hands of the Nazis, illustrate the collapse of the 20th century's grandest assumptions about reason and scientific objectivity. Cartwright presents a polished and graceful story, perhaps too polished, says TIME's R.Z. Sheppard, that "he can't resist tarting up his tale with a bit of porn and pretense."