The Cleft

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.

'Lessing skilfully manipulates multiple perspectives...a bold, inventive and challenging book from a writer who continues to enlighten and astonish as she approaches her tenth decade.' Independent 'A work of elegance, wit, humour and mystery. It may even be considered, one day, as one of her finest works...This is a deeply serious novel, but it's also humane, warm and witty...Doris Lessing, in her ninth decade, is writing fiction that is as hypnotic, perceptive and original as any wunderkind a quarter her age' Glasgow Herald 'The author's reach continues to thrill...there's witchery in the Old She yet.' Daily Telegraph 'A narrative with the compelling stamp of Lessing's late tales.' The Times 'Doris Lessing writes movingly of the human desire for change...she conveys a powerful belief in the impermanence of any situation in which human beings find themselves and the paradoxically unchanging nature of human relations.' Observer 'Lessing's engaging tale is told with the simplicity of an aural history committed to memory.' New Statesman 'Her prose is pleasingly incantatory...the novel has a pleasing gravitational pull on a purely poetic level.' Metro 'Lessing writes, as ever, with such calm and assured authority...a fascinating, at times disturbing book; one can't imagine any other writer bringing it off.' The Scotsman 'Lessing has always observed human behaviour with the dispassionate eye of a Martian naturalist...Her prose thrives on a bigness which comes from her imaginative origins on the Veld of her African childhood, and her rangy plots take vast, fast strides over the horizon, collapsing lifetimes like pocket telescopes ..."The Cleft" is a return to...the Tempest-like condensation of themes that has always enlarged her work' Times Literary Supplement

'Lessing skilfully manipulates multiple perspectives...a bold, inventive and challenging book from a writer who continues to enlighten and astonish as she approaches her tenth decade.' Independent

'A work of elegance, wit, humour and mystery. It may even be considered, one day, as one of her finest works...This is a deeply serious novel, but it's also humane, warm and witty...Doris Lessing, in her ninth decade, is writing fiction that is as hypnotic, perceptive and original as any wunderkind a quarter her age' Glasgow Herald

'The author's reach continues to thrill...there's witchery in the Old She yet.' Daily Telegraph

'A narrative with the compelling stamp of Lessing's late tales.' The Times

'Doris Lessing writes movingly of the human desire for change...she conveys a powerful belief in the impermanence of any situation in which human beings find themselves and the paradoxically unchanging nature of human relations.' Observer

'Lessing's engaging tale is told with the simplicity of an aural history committed to memory.' New Statesman

'Her prose is pleasingly incantatory...the novel has a pleasing gravitational pull on a purely poetic level.' Metro

'Lessing writes, as ever, with such calm and assured authority...a fascinating, at times disturbing book; one can't imagine any other writer bringing it off.' The Scotsman

'Lessing has always observed human behaviour with the dispassionate eye of a Martian naturalist...Her prose thrives on a bigness which comes from her imaginative origins on the Veld of her African childhood, and her rangy plots take vast, fast strides over the horizon, collapsing lifetimes like pocket telescopes ..."The Cleft" is a return to...the Tempest-like condensation of themes that has always enlarged her work' Times Literary Supplement