Doris Lessing

The story of a middle-aged woman’s search for freedom, from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her four children have flown, her husband is otherwise occupied, and after twenty years of being a good wife and mother, Kate Brown is free for a summer of adventure. She plunges into an affair with a younger man, travelling abroad with him, and, on her return to England, meets an extraordinary young woman whose charm and freedom of spirit encourages Kate in her own liberation. Kate’s new life has brought her a strange unhappiness, but as the summer months unfold, a darker, disquieting journey begins, devastating in its consequences. A novel of self-discovery that bears the hallmarks of Lessing’s brilliance, honesty and power to move the reader, ‘The Summer Before the Dark’ has been hailed by some as Lessing’s best book.

The first volume of the autobiography of Doris Lessing, author of ‘The Grass is Singing’ and ‘The Golden Notebook’, and Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Winner of the James Tait Black Prize 1994. Doris Lessing’s autobiography begins with her childhood in Africa and ends on her arrival in London in 1949 with the typescript of her first novel in her suitcase. It charts the evolution first of her consciousness, then of her sexuality and finally of her political awareness with an almost overwhelming immediacy, and is as distinctive and challenging as anything she has ever written. It is already recognised as one of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century.

Dorris Lessing's classic series of autobiographical novels is the fictional counterpart to Under My Skin. In these five novels, first published in the 1950's and 60s, Doris Lessing transformed her fascinating life into fiction, creating her most complex and compelling character, Martha Quest.

"Doris Lessing is the Cassandra of the documentary novel...crying for something harshly denied to our age: a longing for magic, for the irrational. Her concern for life, her independence of judgment and her gift for diagnosing our hydra-headed social ills is extraordinary." -- The ObserverIn the aftermath of World War II, Martha Quest finds herself completely disillusioned. She is losing faith with the communist movement in Africa, and her marriage to one of the movement's leaders is disintegrating. Determined to resist the erosion of her personality, she engages in the first satisfactory love affair and breaks free, if only momentarily, from her suffocating unhappiness.Landlocked is the fourth novel of Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence sequence of novels, each a masterpiece in its own right, and collectively an incisive, all encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.

"Doris Lessing, of all the postwar English novelists, is the foremost creative descendant of that great tradition' which includes George Eliot and D. H. Lawrence." -- New York Times Book ReviewMartha Quest, the embodied heroine of the Children of Violence series, has been acclaimed as one of the greatest fictional creations in the English language. In a Ripple from the Storm, Doris Lessing charts Martha Quest's personal and political adventures in race-torn British Africa, following Martha through World War II, a grotesque second marriage, and an excursion into Communism. This wise and starling novel perceptively reveals the paradoxes, passions, and ironies rooted in the life of twentieth-century Anglo-Africa.A Ripple from the Storm is the third novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence sequence of novels, each a masterpiece in its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.

"A totally modern work. Martha Quest is, above all, ironically percieved by the author in whose hands irony is an instrument of compassion." -- New RepublicAn unconventional woman trapped in a conventional marriage, Martha Quest struggles to maintain her dignity and her sanity through the misunderstandings, frustrations, infidelities, and degrading violence of a failing marriage. Finally, she must make the heartbreaking choice of whether to sacrifice her child as she turns her back on marriage and security.A Proper Marriage is the second novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence series of novels, each a masterpiece on its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.

"I was born with skins too few. Or they were scrubbed off me by...robust and efficient hands."The experiences absorbed through these "skins too few" are evoked in this memoir of Doris Lessing's childhood and youth as the daughter of a British colonial family in Persia and Southern Rhodesia. Honestly and with overwhelming immediacy, Lessing maps the growth of her consciousness, her sexuality, and her politics, offering a rare opportunity to get under her skin and discover the forces that made her one of the most distinguished writers of our time.

A compelling vision of a disorietating and barbaric future from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A study of a man beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown, this is a brilliant and disturbing novel by Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The first volume of Doris Lessingâ??s â??Collected African Storiesâ??, and a classic work from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the second volume of her collected short stories. Lessing is unrivalled in her ability to capture the complexities of relationships, and the stories in this wonderful collection have lost none of their original power. Two marriages, both middle class, liberal and ‘rather literary’, share a shocking flaw, a secret ‘cancer’. A young, beautiful woman from a working-class family is courted by a very eligible, very upmarket man. An ageing actress falls in love for the first time but can only express her feelings through her stage performances because her happily married lover is unobtainable. A dedicated, lifelong rationalist is tempted, after the death of his father, by the comforts of religious belief. In this magnificent collection of stories, which spans four decades, Lessing’s unique gift for observation, her wit, her compassion and remarkable ability to illuminate human life are all remarkably displayed.

An essential and definitive collection of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner's finest essays, reviews, reminiscences and interviews from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the fifth and final instalment in the visionary novel cycle â??Canopus in Argos: Archivesâ??.

The third in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle "Canopus in Argos: Archives". It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

The companion to a series of lectures given by Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in which she addresses some of the most important questions facing us today. ‘This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that – a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice – or if we notice, belittle – equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization …’ In this published version of a series of perceptive and thought-provoking lectures, Lessing stresses the importance of independent thought, of questioning received opinion and fighting the lure of apathy. She argues that only if we are free to interrogate authority and disagree that despotism and ignorance can be defeated. We must examine 'ideas, from whatever source they come, to see how they may usefully contribute to our lives and to the societies we live in’.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the second instalment in the visionary novel cycle â??Canopus in Argos: Archivesâ??.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the first instalment in the visionary novel cycle ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’. The story of the final days of our planet is told through the reports of Johor, an emissary sent from Canopus. Earth, now named Shikasta (the Stricken) by the kindly, paternalistic Canopeans who colonised it many centuries ago, is under the influence of the evil empire of Puttiora. War, famine, disease and environmental disasters ravage the planet. To Johor, mankind is a ‘totally crazed species’, racing towards annihilation: his orders to save humanity set him what seems to be an impossible task. Blending myth, fable and allegory, Doris Lessing’s astonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the history of our own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction.

The fourth in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle "Canopus in Argos: Archives". It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

The second book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s ‘Children of Violence’ series tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa to old age in post-nuclear Britain. ‘A Proper Marriage’ sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise that her marriage has been a terrible mistake. Already the first passionate flush of matrimony has begun to fade; sensuality has become dulled by habit, blissful motherhood now seems no more than a tiresome chore. Caught up in a maelstrom of a world war she can no longer ignore, Martha’s political consciousness begins to dawn, and, seizing independence for the first time, she chooses to make her life her own.

Doris Lessing reissue with new jacket. Harriet and David Lovatt want the same things - fidelity, love, family life and above all a permanent home. Stubbornly out of line with the fashions of the 1960s they decide to marry and lay down the foundations of their haven in a rambling Victorian house. At first, all is idyllic. Children fill their lives and re-united relatives crowd round the kitchen table at Christmas and Easter, greedily enjoying the warmth and solidity of the Lovatts home. It is with the fifth pregnancy that things begin to sour. The baby moves inside Harriet too early, too violently. After a difficult birth, he develops faster and grows much bigger than ordinary infants; he is unloving and instinctively disliked by his brothers and sisters. Inexorably, his alien presence wrecks the dream of their happy family. Harriets fear grows as she struggles to love and care for the child, finding herself faced with a dark sub-continent of human nature, unable to cope. With The Fifth Child Doris Lessing triumphs in a realm of fiction new to her. She has written an ominously tangible novel, a powerfully simple contemporary horror story that makes compulsive reading to the last word. Nominated for the 1988 Los Angeles Times Book Award