Norman Rush - Mating

Note: The author has taken the liberty of borrowing the place name Tsau, which belongs to a village in Ngamiland, for the women’s settlement in the Central Kalahari.

I’m grateful for material support during the writing of this book from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation, for a Bellagio Residency.

For love and encouragement from earliest days I thank my dear friends Dorothy Gallagher and Sylvia Roth, and Ruth Gonze — my loyal sister-in-law, critic, and advocate. For steadfastness on my behalf or for varieties of help at crucial times I’m grateful to my friend and father-in-law Edward Scheidt and the late Ruth Scheidt, to Tom Disch, Dan Menaker, Ben Sonnenberg, Henry H. Roth, my editor Ann Close, my agent Andrew Wylie, Sam Brown, Alison Teal, Elizabeth Udall, Lynn Luria Sukenick, Bob Nichols, Phalatse Tshoagong, Dick Mullaney, Mzichoe Mogobe, Elizabeth and Dick Voigt, Bob Hitchcock, Bill Picon, my brothers Chris, Nick, and Robert, and my late sister, Cathy. For his bravery in persevering in the making of literature under conditions of unimaginable hardship Jacob Khalala is my talisman.