Euphoria

Andrew Bankson, an English anthropologist, has spent years working by himself among the Kiona people along a river in the Territory of New Guinea. Grief over the deaths of his brothers weighs on him, and his fieldwork has left him frustrated and cut off from others. He is close to taking his own life when he runs into Nell Stone and her husband Fen, two fellow researchers. Nell is a figure of controversy, and Fen, an Australian, is sardonic and unpredictable. The couple have just escaped the violent Mumbanyo, and although Nell is in poor health, she is eager to make another discovery.

To keep them from leaving Papua New Guinea, Bankson offers them a different tribe to study. The arrangement sparks a fierce mix of intellectual rivalry and romantic feeling among the three, and it soon slips beyond anyone's control. The prose is graceful and the surroundings are vivid and sensory. The strongest element, though, is the cast, whose absorption in trying to understand what people share across cultures drives the story.

The novel is set between the two world wars and draws on the life of Margaret Mead, the anthropologist whose work reshaped her field. Its characters also echo her circle, with Bankson modeled on Gregory Bateson and Fen on Reo Fortune. Euphoria follows passion, possession, exploration and sacrifice.