The Oasis

The Oasis is Mary McCarthy at her most incisive and mischievous, turning the American hunger for renewal into a razor-edged social comedy.

Set in the years just after World War II, the novel follows a band of intellectuals, artists, and political dreamers who abandon New York City for a dilapidated rural compound they grandly christen "the Oasis."

Their aim is nothing less than to build a new way of living - purged of capitalism, conformity, and moral compromise - through collective labour, shared ideals, and uncompromising honesty.

What unfolds, however, is not utopia but an exquisitely observed anatomy of human contradiction. As the community struggles with muddy fields, leaking roofs, and endless meetings, old hierarchies quietly reassert themselves. Ideological purity gives way to vanity, rivalries harden into dogma, and personal desires undercut public virtue. McCarthy's cool, ironic narrator - both participant and skeptic - records how lofty principles collapse under the weight of ego, sexual politics and the stubborn persistence of class and power.

A W&N Essential