Promotional Information

With the four short novels in this collection, Doris Lessing once again proves that she is unequalled in her ability to capture the truth of the human condition. * Doris Lessing is acknowledged to be one of the greatest writers of our times, by readers, critics and booksellers the world over. * The re-jacketing of Lessing's backlist has taken her to a whole new generation of readers. These new stories will cement that readership. * The Grass is Singing PB has sold over 60,000 copies in the UK, and 50,000 in export.

About the Author

Doris Lessing is widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Reviews

'Lessing's prose is as vigorous in these stories as it has ever been. She has an extraordinary feel not only for landscape but also for the human creature within it.' The Times 'In these four tales Lessing shows her adaptability, and her capacity to unify the most far-flung territories of human experience. Like all great writers, she brings a multitudinous sensibility to bear on individual people, on single rooms, on particular moments - and she makes them live.' Daily Telegraph Doris Lessing has changed the way we think about the world.' Blake Morrison 'Thank goodness for Doris Lessing. While the rest of us flounder about noisily in the muddy waters of life, she never fails to expose with startling clarity the essential folly of our dreams and good intentions.' Kate Chisholm, Evening Standard 'She's up there in the pantheon with Balzac and George Eliot. We're lucky she's still writing.' Lisa Appignanesi, Independent 'She has an extraordinary feeling for the peculiar vulnerabilities of the young and the elderly. And her portraits of human relationships are of quite staggering beauty.' Ruth Scurr, The Times 'Doris Lessing has changed the way we think about the world.' Blake Morrison 'Thank goodness for Doris Lessing. While the rest of us flounder about noisily in the muddy waters of life, she never fails to expose with startling clarity the essential folly of our dreams and good intentions.' Kate Chisholm, Evening Standard 'She's up there in the pantheon with Balzac and George Eliot. We're lucky she's still writing.' Lisa Appignanesi, Independent 'She has an extraordinary feeling for the peculiar vulnerabilities of the young and the elderly. And her portraits of human relationships are of quite staggering beauty.' Ruth Scurr, The Times 'Wonderful... mpressive... intriguing' Time Out 'Lessing forces us to enact, much as the stories themselves do, the tension between truth and lies that is the art of fiction' New Statesman

The latest by the prolific Lessing is a collection of four novellas that vary considerably in quality, with the best of them, "Victoria and the Staveneys" and "A Love Child," showing her at the top of her very impressive form. They are both at once intimately detailed yet infinitely expansive in their suggestions of a lost world only recoverable by a profoundly observant writer. In "Victoria" a young London black woman of charm and great fortitude survives and transcends the hardest of all assimilations: acceptance by a free-thinking, liberal white family. The shades of racial and social subtext here are evoked with a sure hand that even a Zadie Smith could envy. "A Love Child" powerfully evokes a strange aspect of a familiar time: a terrible ocean voyage, during WWII, by a hapless British regiment sent to the Far East to help protect India against Japanese invasion. James Reid, a young conscript, puts ashore in South Africa in the course of this nightmare voyage and embarks on a liaison that transforms the rest of his life. The detail and almost hallucinatory power with which an era and an ethos are recaptured are Lessing at her best, comparable to Ian McEwan's amazing war scenes in Atonement. The other stories are on a much lower level. The title story is about an odd relationship between two older women and each other's young sons; it is an original idea, but curiously lame in the telling. And "The Reason for It" is one of those peculiar tales in the SF/fantasy genre that Lessing does well enough, but that never seem to be quite her m?tier. Still, the two prize pieces here are well worth the price. (Jan. 9) Forecast: Fans of the writer will be amply rewarded by the better half of the book, her best work in some years. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.