This Was The Old Chief's Country

Doris Lessing

 

Synopsis

In this superb volume of African stories, Lessing paints a magnificent portrait of the country in which she grew up. The cruelties of the white man towards the native, the amorphous black mass, like tadpoles, faceless, who existed merely to serve’, the English settlers, ill at ease, the gamblers and moneymakers searching for diamonds and gold, and the presence, latent always in the blood’, of Africa itself, its majestic beauty and timeless landscape: Lessing draws them all together into a powerful, memorable vision.

Review

One brings away a sense of the sheer impossibility of Africa, as a place fit only for habitation by the imagination of exiles and of children. All else seems lost, betrayed and spoiled, except the glare of the sun, the dust, the boulders. An impressive collection. - Daily Telegraph

Author

Doris May Lessing was a British-Zimbabwean novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007.