The Memoirs of a Survivor

Description

A compelling vision of a disorietating and barbaric future from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many years in the future, city life has broken down, communications have failed and food supplies are dwindling. From her window a middle-aged woman - our narrator - watches things fall apart and records what she witnesses: hordes of people migrating to the countryside, gangs of children roaming the streets. One day, a young girl, Emily, is brought to her house by a stranger and left in her care. A strange, precocious adolescent, drawn to the tribal streetlife and its barbaric rituals, she is unafraid of the harsh world outside, while our narrator retreats into her hidden world where reality fades and the past is revisited ...

Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.

'Original and astonishing ... Brilliant persuasive and circumstantial in its imagination, so that each step towards barbarism seems completely necessary.' New Statesman 'For some years and books now [we] have been reading Doris Lessing to find out what's going on - what is happening to our society's nervous system and how it affects the way we live with each other ... She is one of those acute emotional intelligences whose stories provide keys to our personal dilemmas.' Guardian 'An extraordinary and compelling meditation about the enduring need for loyalty, love and responsibility in an unprecedented time.' Time