Martha Quest - Softcover

Lessing, Doris May

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452265762 ISBN 13: 9780452265769

Publisher: Plume, 1993

Synopsis

Intelligent, sensitive, and fiercely passionate, Martha Quest is a young woman living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood. She is a romantic idealistic in revolt against the puritan snobbery of her parents, trying to live to the full with every nerve, emotion, and instinct laid bare to experience. For her, this is a time of solitary reading daydreams, dancing -- and the first disturbing encounters with sex. The first of Doris Lessing's timeless Children of Violence novels, Martha Quest is an endearing masterpiece.

About this title

Review

‘I read the “Children of Violence” novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do.’ Barbara Kingsolver

‘The “Children of Violence” series gives an astounding compression of a total, coherent vision, as if Doris Lessing knew all along where it would end.’ The Times

From the Back Cover

'SHE LOOKED ACROSS THE FIELD TO THE DUMFRIES HILLS AND RE-FASHIONED THAT UNUSED COUNTRY TO THE SCALE OF HER IMAGINATION. THERE AROSE, OVER THE HARSH SCRUB AND THE STUNTED TREES, A NOBLE CITY, SET FOURSQUARE AND COLONNADED, ITS CITIZENS GRAVE AND BEAUTIFUL, BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER.'

The 'Children of Violence' series, a quintet of novels tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in Africa to a post-nuclear Britain of AD 2000, first established Doris Lessing as a great radical writer. In this first volume, Martha, the young rebellious daughter of a white family, finds her coming of age to be a great struggle for freedom and recognition. Intelligent and deeply compassionate, she sees the unpalatable political and social realities of her world with an extraordinary clarity. Martha's vision of a just society takes her beyond the impoverished and rigid farming community to the city – an ill-matched marriage her means of escape...

“Stubborn, resilient, wry towards herself, Martha is Doris Lessing's most satisfying and complex characterisation. She is a child of her times, of violence, who "could no more dissociate herself from the violence done by her than a tadpole can live out of water"”
THE TIMES

“With deceptive simplicity, Doris Lessing reveals more about the private depths of the mind and soul than perhaps one ought to know”
DAILY TELEGRAPH

“'Martha Quest' is a deeply felt and powerfully written account of a modern woman's progress.”
SUNDAY TIMES

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452265762
• ISBN 13: 9780452265769
• Binding: Paperback