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Interviews | October 6, 2009

Jill Owens: IMG The Powells.com Interview with Margaret Atwood



margaretatwoodIn her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood describes a future after humanity had been almost entirely wiped out by a plague. Jimmy, aka Snowman, lives... Continue »
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  18. Dynamics of Faith
  19. Essays of E. B. White (77 Edition)
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  23. Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems, Tales, Criticism
  24. Great Short Works of Herman Melville
  25. Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy
  26. Growing Up in New Guinea
  27. House Made of Dawn
  28. Innocent Erendira: And Other Stories
  29. Island
  30. Leaf Storm: And Other Stories
  31. Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy
  32. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
  33. Native Son
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  35. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
  36. Odyssey of Homer (67 Edition)
  37. Old Yeller
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  39. Poetry, Language, Thought
  40. Profiles in Courage
  41. Red Sky at Morning
  42. Selected Poems 1947-1995
  43. So Big
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  45. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, with Forword and Notes
  46. The Art of Loving
  47. The Art of the Novel (Perennial Classic)
  48. The Autobiography of Mark Twain
  49. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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The Grass is Singing

by Doris Lessing

The Grass is Singing Cover

ISBN13: 9780060953461
ISBN10: 0060953462
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Set in South Africa under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is both a riveting chronicle of human disintegration and a beautifully understated social critique. Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm work their slow poison, and Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of an enigmatic and virile black servant, Moses. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses — master and slave — are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion. Their psychic tension explodes in an electrifying scene that ends this disturbing tale of racial strife in colonial South Africa.

The Grass Is Singing blends Lessing's imaginative vision with her own vividly remembered early childhood to recreate the quiet horror of a woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.

Review:

"Her impressive first novel is told with all the intensity and passion Miss Lessing compacts into all her work." St. Louis Post-Dispatch

About the Author

Doris Lessing was born in 1919. The Grass Is Singing was published in 1950, and since then she has gone on to publish more than fifty books. Named a Companion of Honour and a Companion of Literature in Great Britain, she has been awarded the David Cohen British Literature Prize, Spain's Prince of Asturias Prize, the International Catalunya Award, and the S. T. Dupont Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in North London.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Mariano, August 18, 2008 (view all comments by Mariano)
I admit that I hadn't read Doris Lessing until she won the Nobel. I decided to start with her first novel, and it's a doozy! This is the perfect first book because it makes you hungry for more by the same author. I was enthralled by the story of a woman trapped by society's expectations and the tragic result of her choices. The book is a personal story that touches on the universal implications of racism and slavery.
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(7 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)

Product Details

ISBN:
9780060953461
Subtitle:
A Novel
Author:
Lessing, Doris
Author:
Lessing, Doris
Author:
by Doris Lessing
Author:
by Doris Lessing
Author:
Lessing, Doris May
Publisher:
Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Murder
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
South Africa
Subject:
Married people
Subject:
General Fiction
Copyright:
Edition Description:
1st Perennial Classics ed.
Series:
Perennial Classics
Series Volume:
105-396
Publication Date:
January 2000
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
256
Dimensions:
8.52x4.83x.61 in. .47 lbs.

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