Vintage International
6 total works
In a series of extraordinary letters - brilliantly illuminating both on the writers and their subject - Watkins is reconstructed by those who have know him: the forgotten women who have loved him; the pedant, incensed by his intellectual anarchy; the wartime colleague around whose exploits with the Yugoslavian partisans Watkins builds an astonishing fantasy. Doris Lessing believes that society's treatment of the mentally ill is civilisation's biggest and blackest blind spot, and that it is through the minds of the 'broken-down' that truths we choose to shut out enter like the disguised messengers in myths and fairy tales. Developing themes central to The Golden Notebook and The Four Gated City, this book is her most astounding imaginative achievement - a rare work which explores new areas of thought.
A hugely significant political novel of the late 20th century from one of the outstanding writers of the modern era.
In a London squat, a band of bourgeois revolutionaries are united by a loathing of the waste and cruelty they see around them. These maladjusted malcontents try desperately to become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence. Only Alice seems capable of organising anything. Motherly, practical and determined, she is also easily exploited by the group and ideal fodder for a more dangerous and potent cause. Eventually their naive radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, but the aftermath is not as exciting as they had hoped. Nonetheless, while they may not have changed the world, their lives will never be the same again…
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.
A compelling vision of a disorietating and barbaric future from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Many years in the future, city life has broken down, communications have failed and food supplies are dwindling. From her window a middle-aged woman – our narrator – watches things fall apart and records what she witnesses: hordes of people migrating to the countryside, gangs of children roaming the streets. One day, a young girl, Emily, is brought to her house by a stranger and left in her care. A strange, precocious adolescent, drawn to the tribal streetlife and its barbaric rituals, she is unafraid of the harsh world outside, while our narrator retreats into her hidden world where reality fades and the past is revisited …