Product Description

The first book in the "Children of Violence" series, a quintet of novels tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa through to old age in a post-nuclear Britain. The other novels are "A Proper Marriage", "A Ripple from the Storm", "Landlocked" and "The Four-Gated City".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #142790 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her first novel, "The Grass is Singing", was published in 1950. Among her other celebrated novels are "The Golden Notebook", "The Summer Before the Dark" and "Memoirs of a Survivor". She has also published two volumes of her autobiography, "Under my Skin" and "Walking in the Shade". Her most recent novel is "The Cleft".

Customer Reviews

A novel of many layers
This first novel in the 'Children of Violence' series is a vivid, beautifully written, and at times uncomfortable account of a young girl, Martha Quest, growing up in a British colony in Africa just before World War II. Martha is a wonderful character; stubborn and resilient - and full of bitter adolescent resentment and self-consciousness. Although her ideas are radical for the time, Martha is also subject to her own uncertainty and insecurities, which allow her to be swept along with the tide. Without consciously meaning to, she conforms to the expectations of society and her contemporaries - as a result, she finds herself in a world she doesn't understand, and in the company of those she feels little but contempt for. Inevitably, she succumbs to the way of life that has for so long repulsed her. Simmering beneath the surface is the racism and hypocrisy prevalent in the colonies, and the gradual acceptance that elsewhere in the world, a war is brewing.

This is a superb novel and makes for compulsive reading. There is much truth that can be taken from the book, and I highly recommend it: especially for all those who know that sometimes it can be hard to find your place in the world.

Interesting Reading
Martha Quest which is the first in a line of books by Lessing makes for interesting and light reading. Life in colonial Africa, with its vintage charm, particularly for the fledgling adolescent is quite an attractive theme. Lessing's use of language is particularly clever, esp. her use of metaphor and motifs, which does not hand the reader everything on a platter. a good book