Book description
The third in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle "Canopus in
Argos: Archives".
Shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize, 'The Sirian Experiments' is the
third volume in Doris Lessing's celebrated space fiction series,
'Canopus in Argos: Archives'. In this interlinked quintet of novels, she
creates a new, extraordinary cosmos where the fate of the Earth is
influenced by the rivalries and interactions of three powerful galactic
empires, Canopus, Sirius and their enemy, Puttiora. 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 Sirian Experiments' chronicles the origins of our planet, as the
three galactic empires fight for control of the human race. The novel
charts the gradual moral awakening of its narrator, Ambien II, a 'dry,
dutiful, efficient' female Sirian administrator. Witnessing the wanton
colonisation of land and people, Ambien begins to question her
involvement in such insidious experimentation, her faith in the
possibility of human progress itself growing weaker every day. Doris
Lessing was the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature and is one
of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth
century. Her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing' was published in 1950,
and since then her international reputation has flourished. Among her
other celebrated novels are 'The Golden Notebook', 'The Summer Before
the Dark', and 'Memoirs of a Survivor'. Her most recent works include
two volumes of autobiography, 'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the
Shade', her most recent novel is 'The Cleft'.
