Shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize. The SirianExperiments is the third volume in Doris Lessing's celebratedspace fiction series. 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'. In this interlnkedquintet of novels, she creates a new, extraordinary cosmos where thefate of the Earth is influenced by the rivalries and interactions ofthree powerful galactic empires, Canopus, Sirius and their enemy,Puttiora.blending myth, fable and allegory, Doris Lessing'sastonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the historyof own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragicself-destruction.
The Sirian Experiments chronicles the origins of our planet,the three galactic empires fight for control of the human race. Thenovel charts the gradual moral awakening of its narrator, charts thecharts the gradual moral awakening of its narrator, Ambien II, a 'dry,dutiful, efficient' female Sirian administrator. Witnessing the wantoncolonisation of land and people, Ambien begins to question herinvolvement in such insidious experimentation, her faith in thepossibility os human progress itself growing weaker every day.
专业书评
'The story Ambien tells is a panorama of the posibilitiesof civilisation and barbarism, ranging from a matriarchal version ofAtlantis to the Aztec cult of human sacrifice. Doris Lessing'sinterests are strictly terrestrial an the figures from outer space arethere to serve as tellers of an earthly tale providing a new,sometimes startling, perspective on earthly affairs and a largeless ofvision beyond the horizon of the conventional novel.' - Robert Alter,New York Times'One of our greatest contemporary writers...Doris Lessing has inventeda new cosmology to look at the world in new way: she is attempting totackle nothing less than all human life on Earth.' - Financial Times
作者简介
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 |