The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing

The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing

Exploring the paradox and fantasy of ideological purity, The Good Terrorist is at once a perennially relevant satire and a complex character-study by Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing.

In a dilapidated London squat, a ragged band of bourgeois revolutionaries is bound together by a furious disgust at the waste and cruelty they see in the world around them. Ill-suited and ill-prepared, they soon become involved in acts of terrorism far beyond their competence. Alice, motherly, practical and fiercely determined, becomes both the group’s organiser and its easiest victim – the perfect prey for a darker, more dangerous cause. When naive, radical fantasies become real, chaotic destruction, nothing in their lives will ever be the same again.

‘In “The Good Terrorist” we are in the world of the subsidized sub-culture of the Marxist groupuscules of contemporary Britain…Lessing has a wit, an indignation and a narrative agility which leave few left-wing sacred cows unscathed…hugely enjoyable’ Sunday Times

‘Doris Lessing writes about the parts other novelists cannot reach. This is a totally absorbing, subtly observed, complicated and stimulating novel.’ Observer

‘“The Good Terrorist” is a work of acute intelligence, incisive and compelling…it shows Doris Lessing at her mature best.’ Listener

Praise for Doris Lessing:

‘Doris Lessing has changed the way we think about the world.’ Blake Morrison

‘Thank goodness for Doris Lessing. While the rest of us flounder about noisily in the muddy waters of life, she never fails to expose with startling clarity the essential folly of our dreams and good intentions.’ Kate Chisholm, Evening Standard

‘She’s up there in the pantheon with Balzac and George Eliot. We’re lucky she’s still writing.’ Lisa Appignanesi, Independent

Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing', was published in 1950. Among her other celebrated novels are 'The Golden Notebook', 'The Fifth Child' and 'Memoirs of a Survivor'. She has also published two volumes of her autobiography, 'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the Shade'. Doris Lessing died on 17 November 2013 at the age of 94.