Ben Lovatt can never fit in. To those he meets, he seems awkward - too big, too strong, inhumanly made. He baffles and he terrifies: those who do not understand him want him locked up.His own mother locked him up; then, guilty, she liberated him. But her unyielding love for him corroded their family; the fifth child broke the home into bits. And now he is come of age, and again finds himself bewildered and alone. He searches in the faces of those he meets, to see the hostility there, or the fear, or, more rarely, the kindness. Occasionally, a gentler, less fearful person understands his need, how hard he is trying to fit in. Mostly, people make use of him, and he finds himself in the south of France, in Brazil, and in the mountains of the Andes, where at last he finds out where he has come from, who are his people.

Ben, in the World: The Sequel to "the Fifth Child"

Literature & Fiction

Lessing, Doris May

Genre Fiction

Harpercollins Pub, Ltd.

Winter in July

Flamingo

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 is the fourth volume in Doris Lessing's celebrated space fiction series, 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'.

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

LESSING, DORIS

Contemporary

Shikasta is the first volume in doris Lessing's celebrated space fiction series celebrated space fiction series, 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'. In this interlinked quintet of novels, she creates a new, extraordinary cosmos where the fate of 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. In Shikasta the story of the final days of our planet is told through the Johor, an emissary sent from Canopus. Twentieth-century Earth, named 'Shikasta, the stricken' by the kindly paternalistic Canopeans sho colonised it many centruies ago, is under the influence of the evil empire, Puttoria. War, famine, disease and environmental disasters ravage the planet. To Johor, mankind is a 'totally crazed species', racing towards annihilation: his orders to save humanity set him what seems to be an impossible task.

Shikasta

the Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five is the second 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 alegory, Doris Lessing's astonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the history of own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction. The Marriagesis set in the indeterminate lands of the Zones, Strange realms which encircle the Earth. Zone Three, a peaceful, contented, matriarchalparadise, is ruled by the gentle Queen Al-Ith;the neighbouring Zone four is land given to war and chaos, controlled by brutal warrior-king, Ben-Ata. Their marriage, a melding of the extreme male and female principles, threatens to destabilise the entire galactic empire.

The Marriages Between Zones Three@@ Four and Five

Literary

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 interlnked 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 own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction. 
The Sirian Experiments chronicles the origins of our planet, the three galactic empires fight for control of the human race. The novel charts the gradual moral awakening of its narrator, charts the 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 os human progress itself growing weaker every day.

The Sirian Experiments

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

The first book after Doris' Nobel Prize takes her back to her childhood in Southern Africa and the lives, both fictional and factual, that her parents lead. 'I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of it? It is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness.' In this extraordinary book, the new Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, both of them irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the simple life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches, and thereafter he had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother Emily's great love was a doctor, who drowned in the Channel, and she spent the war nursing the wounded in the Royal Free Hospital. In the first half of this book, Doris Lessing imagines the lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war at all, a story that has them meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester as children but leading separate lives. This is followed by a piercing examination of their lives as they actually came to be in the shadow of that war, their move to Rhodesia, a damaged couple squatting over Doris's childhood in a strange land. 'Here I still am,' says Doris Lessing, 'trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free.' With the publication of Alfred and Emily she has done just that.

Alfred and Emily

Fourth Estate

The author writes about her homeland--from which she was exiled by the former all-white government--discussing political corruption, AIDS, communal living, and more

African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Harpercollins

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 Review

The author recounts her childhood in Persia and Southern Rhodesia, difficult adolescence, two marriages, political activity, and growth as a writer

Under My Skin: My Autobiography to 1949

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lessing, Doris May. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lessing, Doris May

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lessing, Doris May. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Ben, in the World: The Sequel to "the Fifth Child"

Winter in July

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

Shikasta

The Marriages Between Zones Three@@ Four and Five

The Sirian Experiments

Alfred and Emily

African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe

African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe

Under My Skin: My Autobiography to 1949