An 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 h[...]

In 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 satisfa[...]

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the h[...]

Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggleagainst a ruthless fate.Mary Turner is a self-confident, ind[...]

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing's classic novel of the pivotal summer in one woman's life is a brilliant excursion into the terrifying gulf between youth and old age.
As the summer begins, Kate Brown--attractive, intelligent, forty-five, happily married, with a house in the London suburbs and three[...]

In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorize the streets, where government has broken down and meaningless violence holds sway, a woman -- middle-aged and middle-class -- is brought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is her responsibility to raise the child. This book, which the [...]

"The Man Who Loved Children" is a magnificent novel of family life. The Pollits--Sam and Henny and their swarming household of children and animals--are American. (The time: the 1940s; the setting: in and around Washington and Baltimore.) The writer who brings them overwhelmingly to life is Australi[...]

Ancient tradition suggests that this world-weary lament is the work of Solomon in old age. Casting its eye over the transient nature of life, the book questions the striving for wisdom and the truth, choosing instead to espouse the value of living for the moment. The text is introduced by Doris Less[...]

A fascinating look inside the mind of a man who is supposedly "mad." "From the Paperback edition.