Lessing, Doris Mara and Dann ISBN 13: 9780002259255

Mara and Dann - Softcover

9780002259255: Mara and Dann
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The new novel from one of the greatest twentieth-century writers.

Doris Lessing returns to the world of visionary fiction, last visited in her acclaimed ‘Canopus in Argos’ quintet of novels in the 1980s.

It is sooner than you might think. And the earth’s climate is much changed – it’s colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home, getting used to all these new names...

They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, to make a new life in this unforgiving rocky terrain. Their new guardian seems to be of their kin, and the caution and curiosity of her neighbours confirms to the alert Mara that she and Dann are in some way marked as notable, so special that many will come to seek them, many to suspect them, and disguise will often seem the best option. This new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children’s constant companions as they grow into their selves. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures, cultures, trials, revelations and crises that bring them through to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew, to achieve a new kind of notability.

Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we only dimly perceive and scarcely know how to value.

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Review:

‘I hope everyone reads Mara and Dann and it wins all the prizes.’ Victoria Glendinning, Literary Review

‘An outstanding piece of storytelling... rich and imaginative.’
Helen Dunmore, Daily Mail

‘Fascinating and profoundly curious.’ Rachel Cusk, Daily Express

From the Back Cover:

'We are in Africa, now known as Ifrik. The northern hemisphere has succumbed to a new Ice Age. Two children, Mara and Dann, set forth on an odyssey towards the greener country on the chilly southern edge of the Mediterranean. As in all folk tales based on a journey, they pass through ordeals. They meet huge beetles whose pincers can bisect a child, lizards that can carry off a woman in their jaws, both as adventure story and as ecological fable, displays all the vision of a muscular mind. I hope everyone reads it and it wins all the prizes.'
VICTORIA GLENDINNING, 'Literary Review'

'Part fairy tale, part tract for our time, this is an ambitious, demanding, remarkable book. With 'Mara and Dann', Lessing has created a mythical girl and boy who are also touching and credible. Into Mara, the girl child who finds herself, Lessing pours all her insight into how female nature is shaped. A wise, rich and melancholy book.'
ANNE CHISHOLM, 'Sunday Telegraph'

'Together Mara and Dann trace the patterns of gender and of human love from childhood to sexual maturity. Mara's adventures are female, stories of love, fertility, vulnerability and ultimately empowerment; Dann's are darker tales of temptation and sin. Asserted throughout this gripping narrative is a belief in the indestructibility of love. A fascinating profoundly curious novel.'

'Lessing imagines in extraordinary detail how Mara slowly learns survival – how to dig up yellow roots to make flour, how to milk a half-starved cow, how to avoid the giant insects that flourish as drought and flash floods drive human beings into retreat. The reader is left elated by the epic scope of Lessing's vision of life on earth. She has produced her best book yet.'
MAGGIE Gee, 'Daily Telgraph'

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  • PublisherFlamingo
  • Publication date1999
  • ISBN 10 0002259257
  • ISBN 13 9780002259255
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages352
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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780060930561: Mara and Dann: An Adventure

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780060930561
Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2000
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    Flamingo, 2000
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  • 9780060182946: Mara and Dann: An Adventure

    Harper..., 1999
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  • 9780002256391: Mara and Dann

    Flamingo, 1999
    Hardcover

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Lessing Doris
Published by Flamingo, London (1999)
ISBN 10: 0002259257 ISBN 13: 9780002259255
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Book Description SOFTCOVER. A visionary novel from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is sooner than you might think. And the Earth's climate is much changed - it's colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home . They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, but this new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children's constant companions. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures that bring them to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew. Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we perceive only dimly and scarcely know how to value. 1999. A trade paperback copy in near fine condition. Seller Inventory # 17055679

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