This Was the Old Chief's Country: v. 1: Collected African Stories (平装) 0586091130

'It can be said of all white-dominated Africa that itwas - and still is - the Old Chief's Country. So all the stories Iwrite of a certain kind I think of as belonging under that heading:tales about white people, sometimes about black people, living in alandscape that not so very long ago was settled by black tribes,living in complex societies that the white people are only justbeginning to study, let alone understand.' - Doris Lessing, fromthe Preface

In this superb volume of African stories, Doris Lessing paints amagnificent portrait of the country in which she grew up. Thecruelties of the white man towards the native, 'die amorphous blackmass, like tadpoles, faceless, who existed merely to serve', theEnglish settlers, ill at ease, the gamblers and moneymakers; searchingfor diamonds and gold, and the presence, 'latent always in the blood',of Africa itself, its majestic beauty and timeless landscape: DorisLessing draws them all together into a powerful, memorable vision.

Includes a new, previously uncollected story.

'In story after story, Doris Lessing portrays the helpless collisionsand alienations of the races. In "The Second Hut", a Rhodesian farmeris torn with anxiety and guilt about employing a poor Boer assistantwith ni ' me children because of the hostility between Boer and nativeworkers. One brings away a sense, of the sheer human impossibility ofSouth Africa, as a place fit only for habitation by the imagination ofexiles and of children. All else seems lost, betrayed and spoiled,except the glare of the sun, the dust, the boulders. An impressivecollection.' - Gabriel Pearson, Daily Telegraph

'Doris Lessing's sense of setting is so immediate, the touch and tasteof her continent is so strong, that Africa seems to become theuniverse.' - Newsweek

'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'Doris Lessing's sense of setting is so immediate, the touch and taste of her continent is so strong, that Africa seems to become the universe.' Newsweek Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia (nowIran) in 1919 and was taken to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) whenshe was five. She spent her childhood on a large farm there and firstcame to England in 1949. She brought with her the manuscript of herfirst novel, The Grass is Singing, which was published in 1950 withoutstanding success in Britain, in America, and in ten Europeancountries. Since then her international reputation not only as anovelist but as a non-fiction and short story writer hasflourished. For her collection of short novels, Five, she was honouredwith the 1954 Somerset Maugham Award. She was awarded the AustrianState Prize for European Literature in 1981, and the German FederalRepublic Shakespeare Prize of 1982. Among her other celebrated novelsare The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark and Memoirs of aSurvivor. Her short stories have been collected in a number ofvolumes, including To Room Nineteen and The Temptation of Jack Orkney;while her African stories appear in This Was the Old Chief's Countryand The Sun Between Their Feet. Shikasta, the first in a series offive novels with the overall title of Canopus in Argos: Archives, waspublished in 1979. Her novel The Good Terrorist won the W. H. SmithLiterary Award for 1985, and the Mondello Prize in Italy thatyear. The Fifth Child won the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy, an awardvoted on by students in their final year at school. The Making of theRepresentative for Planet 8 was made into an opera with Philip Glass,libretto by the author, and premiered in Houston. London Observed, herlatest collection of stories and sketches, was published to wideacclaim in 1992.

出版社	Flamingo
作者	Doris May Lessing