Set against the vivid backdrop of modern-day Africa–a continent now primarily populated with wildlife of the two-legged sort–Lionel Shriver’s Game Control is a wry, grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions.

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor’s ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition.

With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would save humanity but who don’t like people.