In her 1985 CBC Massey Lectures Doris Lessing addresses the question of personal freedom and individual responsibility in a world increasingly prone to political rhetoric, mass emotions, and inherited structures of unquestioned belief. The Nobel Prize-winning author of more than thirty books, Doris Lessing is one of our most challenging and important writers.

The Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing’s first novel is a taut and tragic portrayal of a crumbling marriage, set in South Africa during the years of Arpartheid.Doris Lessing brought the manuscript of ‘The Grass is Singing’ with her when she left Southern Rhodesia and came to England in 1950. When it was first published it created an impact whose reverberations we are still feeling, and immediately established itself as a landmark in twentieth-century literature.Set in Rhodesi...

"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." — Michiko Kakutani, New York TimesShocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing's unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.Roz and Lil have been best friends s...

"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do." — Barbara KingsolverIntelligent, sensitive, and fiercely passionate, Martha Quest is a young woman living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood. She is a romantic idealistic in revolt ag...

Shocking, intimate, oftenuncomfortably honest, these stories reaffirm Doris Lessing’s unequalled abilityto capture the truth of the human conditionIn the title novel, two friendsfall in love with each other's teenage sons, and these passions last for years,until the women end them, vowing a respectable old age. In Victoriaand the Staveneys, a young woman gives birth to a child of mixedrace and struggles with feelin...

A highly personal story of the eminent British writer returning to her African roots that is "brilliant . . . [and] captures the contradictions of a young country." — New York Times Book ReviewA rich and penetrating portrait of Lessing's homeland, African Laughter recounts the visits she made to Zimbabwe in 1982, 1988, 1989, and 1992, after being exiled from the old Southern Rhodesia for 25 years for her opposition to the minority white government. Lessing uses memory and reminisce...

"Tenderly perceptive....A resounding affirmation of humanity and what it holds dearest, from one of our most gifted storytellers."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)Thousands of years in the future, all the northern hemisphere is buried under the ice and snow of a new Ice Age. At the southern end of a large landmass called Ifrik, two children of the Mahondi people, seven-year old Mara and her younger brother, Dann, are abducted from their home in the midd...

From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.In the last ye...

"She has revealed that brilliant kernel at the heart of it all that we recognize as the truth." — Francine Prose, Washington Post Book WorldLove, Again tells the story of a 65-year-old woman who falls in love and struggles to maintain her life as she knows it. Widowed for many years, with grown children, Sarah is a writer who works in the theater in London. During the production of a play, she falls in love with a seductive young actor, the beauti...

Long considered Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing’s best collection of short stories, African Stories—a central book in the work of a truly beloved writer—is now back in print. This beautiful collection is an homage to her twenty-five years spent in Africa and a brilliant portrait of African life.This is Doris Lessing’s Africa—where she lived for twenty-five years and where so much of her interest and concern still resides. Here in these stories, Lessing ex...