ABOUT THE BOOK

Doris Lessing returns to the world of visionary fiction, last visited in her acclaimed 'Canopus in Argos' quintet of novels in the 1980s. It is sooner than you might think. And the earth's climate is much changed - it's colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home. They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, but this new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children's constant companions. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures that bring them through to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew.

Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we only dimly perceive and scarcely know how to value.

Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 and was taken to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when she was five. She spent her childhood on a large farm there and first came to England in 1949. She brought with her the manuscript of her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing', which was published in 1950 with outstanding success in Britain, in America, and in ten European countries.

Since then her international reputation not only as a novelist but as a non-fiction and short story writer has flourished. For her collection of short novels, 'Five', she was honoured with the 1954 Somerset Maugham Award. She was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1981, and the German Federal Republic Shakespeare Prize of 1982. Among her other celebrated novels are: The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark, Memoirs of a Survivor and the five volume Children of Violence series.

Her short stories have been collected in a number of volumes, including To Room Nineteen and The Temptation of Jack Orkney; while her African stories appear in This Was the Old Chief's Country and The Sun Between Their Feet. Shikasta, the first in a series of five novels with the overall title of Canopus in Argos: Archives, was published in 1979.

Her novel The Good Terrorist won the W.H. Smith Literary Award for 1985, and the Mondello Prize in Italy that year. The Fifth Child won the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy, an award voted on by students in their final year at school. The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 was made into an opera with Philip Glass, libretto by the author, and premièred in Houston. Her most recent works include a novel, Love Again and two volumes of her autobiography, Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade.

Here are some readers' thoughts on Mara and Dann by Doris Lessing:

"This is an unusual story set in Africa in the next Ice Age several thousand years in the future. Described as 'An Adventure', although arguably it could be called science fiction, it tells the story of a sister and brother, Mara and Dann, who as children are abducted from their homes, and their struggle for survival against a background of famine, drought and wars. Mara and Dann join the northward migration where they experience almost every possible human situation.

This is a political novel, in which the author uses the future lost cities and vanishing civilisations to comment on the present. Her future is a return to a basic and primitive way of life. Rival armies run each part of Africa and all seem constantly at war. Young women's roles are identified with breeding, as children become scarce. Young men's aspirations are tied up with armies. Tribes enslave other tribes - there are always lurking menaces and dangers. Many times Mara and Dann buy their way out of danger with gold coins, suggesting that even in this bleak setting money would still buy power and influence. It describes tribes and people whose appearance would be very different to what would be considered normal. Some characters are presented as physical clones of each other, often with one being good and the other being evil.

The characters of Mara and Dann are movingly portrayed. Mara, the elder child, is a strong protector of Dann, the younger and more vulnerable child. Their loyalty to each other and their relationship at times borders on the sexual. The other characters in the novel are divided into good and evil.

This is certainly a thought-provoking book. The adventures of Mara and Dann seem to have a Hansel and Gretel theme and, while interesting, the strength of the book lies in its futuristic setting. It is immensely readable, but perhaps a bit too long, with too many adventures for one book. However, it is well worth reading and would make a worthy winner."

Reviewed by a Member of Raheny Library Readers Group.

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"The 400-odd pages of Mara and Dann seem a daunting prospect at the outset, but in fact it is a real page turner. Set at some time in the distant future in a continent called Ilfrick (Africa), the story begins with Mara and Dann, sister and brother, aged seven and four respectively, being rescued, hidden, and given new names. Life is basic, primitive and they, with their carer, a woman called Daima, are outsiders in their primitive village. All around is drought, ever spreading northwards. All memory of their previous world is vanished and blotted out. Survival is everything. Eventually, the need to move north in search of food and water becomes imperative, and the odyssey of Mara and Dann now approaching adulthood begins.

The novel is essentially about the journey northward, the ups and downs, the ever present dangers and the urge to survive. This is a world where all previous technology is lost; there are no wheeled vehicles or motorised boats, although some vestiges of the past in sky skimmers (short hop air coaches run on some kind of sugar fuel) survive. There are a number of themes, e.g. ecological disaster, survival, memory, identity. As with many stories of journeys, the travels are more interesting than the arrivals. The various stops along the way slow down the narrative and the idyllic final destination doesn't work for this reader. But never mind - it's a great read."

Member of Raheny Library Reading Group.