Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

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Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

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Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

Alfred and Emily is an intimate and revealing book by Doris Lessing, the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature and author of The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, that explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War.

In this profoundly moving book, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of Alfred and Emily, she imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the devastating global conflict.

"Here I still am," says Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with Alfred and Emily, she has done just that.


  • A Unique Hybrid of Fiction and Memoir: Lessing splits the book into two powerful halves--first imagining the lives her parents might have lived, then confronting the stark reality of what was.
  • The Great War's Enduring Shadow: A searing account of how World War I irrevocably damaged two ordinary people, shaping a family's destiny for generations.
  • An Alternate History of the Heart: What if there had been no war? The book opens with a deeply felt novella that gives her parents the happiness they never had.
  • A Nobel Laureate's Most Personal Work: The acclaimed author of The Golden Notebook turns her formidable intellect and insight inward to understand her own origins.
Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books--novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. In 2007, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780060834890
ISBN 10 0060834897
Title Alfred and Emily
Author Doris Lessing
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Year published 2009-10-20
Number of pages 288
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.