Book description
This is the first volume of Doris Lessing's 'Collected African
Stories'. A classic work of 20th-century literature from the Winner of
the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007.
'It can be said of all white-dominated Africa that it was - and still
is - the Old Chief's Country. So all the stories I write of a certain
kind I think of as belonging under that heading; tales about white
people, sometimes about black people, living in a landscape that not so
very long ago was settled by black tribes, living in complex societies
that the white people are only just beginning to study, let alone
understand.' Doris Lessing, from the preface
In this superb volume of African stories, Doris Lessing paints a
magnificent portrait of the country in which she grew up. The cruelties
of the white man towards the native, 'the amorphous black mass, like
tadpoles, faceless, who existed merely to serve', the English settlers,
ill at ease, the gamblers and moneymakers searching for diamonds and
gold, and the presence, 'latent always in the blood', of Africa itself,
its majestic beauty and timeless landscape: Doris Lessing draws them all
together into a powerful, memorable vision. 'One brings away a sense
of the sheer impossibility of Africa, as a place fit only for habitation
by the imagination of exiles and of children. All else seems lost,
betrayed and spoiled, except the glare of the sun, the dust, the
boulders. An impressive collection.' Daily Telegraph
'Doris Lessing's sense of setting is so immediate, the touch and taste
of her continent is so strong, that Africa seems to become the
universe.' Newsweek 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'.
