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THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK

Widely considered one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century,
The Golden Notebook
tells the story of Anna Wulf, a writer who records the threads of her life in four separate notebooks. As she attempts to integrate those fragmented chronicles into one golden notebook, Anna gives voice to the challenges of identity-building in a chaotic world. Known for its literary innovation,
The Golden Notebook
brilliantly captures the anxieties and possibilities of an era with a vitality that continues to leave its mark on each new generation of readers.

ESSENTIAL DORIS LESSING CD: EXCERPTS FROM
THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK
READ BY THE AUTHOR

ALFRED & EMILY

In this extraordinary book, Lessing offers a moving meditation on parents and children, war and memory, as she explores the lives of her parents, two individuals irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of
Alfred & Emily
, Lessing imagines the happier lives her parents might have led had there been no war. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the war, the family's move to Africa, and the impact of their strained union on their daughter, a young woman growing up in a strange land.

TIME BITES: VIEWS AND REVIEWS

In this collection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays, we are treated to the wisdom and keen insight of a writer who has learned, over the course of a brilliant career spanning more than half a century, to read the world differently. From imagining the secret sex life of Tolstoy to the secrets of Sufism, from reviews of classic books to commentaries on world politics, these essays cover an impressive range of subjects, cultures, periods, and themes, yet they are remarkably consistent in one key regard: Lessing's clear-eyed vision and clearly expressed prose.

THE CLEFT

In the last years of his life, a contemplative Roman senator embarks on one last epic endeavor: to retell the history of human creation and reveal the little-known story of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic coastal wilderness. The Clefts have neither need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child—a boy—the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.

In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.

MARA AND DANN

Thousands of years in the future, all the northern
hemisphere is buried under the ice and snow of a new Ice Age. At the southern end of a large landmass called Ifrik, two children of the Mahondi people, seven-year-old Mara and her younger brother, Dann, are abducted from their home in the middle of the night. Raised as outsiders in a poor rural village, Mara and Dann learn to survive the hardships and dangers of a life threatened as much by an unforgiving climate and menacing animals as by a hostile community of Rock People. Eventually they join the great human migration North, away from the drought that is turning the southern land to dust and in search of a place with enough water and food to support human life. Traveling across the continent, the siblings enter cities rife with crime, power struggles, and corruption, learning as much about human nature as about how societies function. With a clear-eyed vision of the human condition,
Mara and Dann
is imaginative fiction at its best.

THE STORY OF GENERAL DANN AND MARA'S DAUGHTER, GRIOT AND THE SNOW DOG

Dann is grown up now, hunting for knowledge and despondent over the inadequacies of his civilization. With his trusted companions—Mara's daughter, his hope for the future; the abandoned child-soldier Griot, who discovers the meaning of love and the ability to sing stories; and the snow dog, a faithful friend who brings him back from the depths of despair—Dann embarks on a strange and captivating adventure in a suddenly colder, more watery climate in the north.

THE GRANDMOTHERS: FOUR SHORT NOVELS

In the title novel, two friends fall in love with each other's teenage sons, and these passions last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age. In
Victoria and the Staveneys
, a young woman gives birth to a child of mixed race and struggles with feelings of estrangement as her daughter gets drawn into a world of white privilege.
The Reason for It
traces the birth, faltering, and decline of an ancient culture, with enlightening modern resonances.
A Love Child
features a World War II soldier who believes he has fathered a love child during a fleeting wartime romance and cannot be convinced otherwise.

THE SWEETEST DREAM

Frances Lennox ladles out dinner every night to the motley, exuberant, youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table: her two sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends, and fresh-off-the-street friends. It's the early 1960s and certainly “everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Except financial circumstances demand that Frances and her sons live with her proper ex-mother-in-law. And her ex-husband, Comrade Johnny, has just dumped his second wife's problem child at Frances's feet. And the world's political landscape has suddenly become surreal beyond imagination. . . .

Set against the backdrop of the decade that changed the world forever,
The Sweetest Dream
is a riveting look at a group of people who dared to dream—and faced the inevitable cleanup afterward—from one of the greatest writers of our time.