Alfred and Emily - Hardcover

Lessing, Doris May

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060834889 ISBN 13: 9780060834883

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2008

Synopsis

A deeply personal meditation on family, parents and children, war and memory takes the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grass Is Singing back to her childhood in Southern Africa and the lives, both fictional and factual, that her parents led in the wake of the devastation of the Great War. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

'Writers approaching 90 aren't supposed to write with vigour or experiment with form. But Lessing has never done the expected thing and "Alfred and Emily" is one more exception in an exceptional career.' Blake Morrison, Guardian

‘This tale has a quality at once dreamy and wooden, like beautifully carved wooden dolls. Vividly and urgently written, [it] makes us think about the moral and emotional power of different ways of telling a story.' Financial Times

'Vivid, turbulent, raw with emotion.' Sunday Telegraph

'Quietly extraordinary...this perfectly crafted book is, as Lessing knows, the latest instalment of a remarkable payback.' Observer

'Powerful ... it is fascinating to see [Lessing] focus so sharply in her new book on what must be for us all, the most intimate of personal narratives: our parents' lives, what they were, or might have been.' The Times

'It has the freshness, clarity and emotional acuity that made her first novel "The Grass is Singing" so outstanding. A tribute to a remarkable childhood, and a poignant memoir of the mother whose greatest legacy to her daughter was an invaluable gift for storytelling.’ Literary Review

From the Back Cover:

In this profoundly moving book, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of Alfred and Emily, she imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the devastating global conflict.

"Here I still am," says Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with Alfred and Emily, she has done just that.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060834889
• ISBN 13: 9780060834883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 274