With her intimate knowledge of Africa, Doris Lessings' novels and stories have made her the leading interpreter for us of life in British territory to the north of the Union of South Africa. Thither she mainly returns in this book, a series of unrelated pieces conceived as novels and not as short stories. Two themes in particular have seized her imagination here: the clash of colour, and the lure of gold. Two of the novels are set in the gold-fields. A third, A Home for the Highland Cattle, is the wry comedy of a young English woman newly settled in an African city who, from the most enlightened of motives, departs from the generally accepted way of dealing with native servants. Hunger is the story of an intelligent young native's fate in moving from the Reserve to the city. For anyone wishing to understand the tragic situation in Africa today these are imperative reading; but in addition to the importance of their content, they are works of art. In the remaining story, The Other Woman, Miss Lessing breaks new ground: she has gone for her scene to the working-class London of the wartime blitz.

Whether her subject is Africa of England, she writes always as though she were a force of nature, and this collection will enhance her already great reputation as the most powerful of our younger writers.

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© Nuria Soler Pérez, 2001