The fifth and final volume in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives. It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

With the four short novels in this collection, Doris Lessing once again proves that she is unequalled in her ability to capture the truth of the human condition.The title story, 'The Grandmothers', is an astonishing tour de force, a shockingly intimate portrait of an unconventional extended family and the lengths to which they will go to find happiness and love. Written with a keen cinematic eye, the story is a ruthless dissection of the veneer of middle-class morality and convention which manages to be at once universal and desperately, heartbreakingly personal.A second story, 'Victoria and...

The first in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives. It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

As the world falls apart outside, the narrator watches over Emily, a young child brought into her care by a stranger. Emily is also guarded by Hugo, half cat and half dog, the bizarre and lovable beast whose presence dominates the tale.

The fourth in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives. It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

The second in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives. It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

The third in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives. It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.

Anna Wulf is a young novelist with writer's block. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. In fear of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks.

This is the story of a band of bourgeois young revolutionaries living in a London squat and united by a loathing of the waste and cruelty they see in the city around them.

Set in Rhodesia, 'The Grass is Singing' tells the story of Dick Turner, a failed white farmer and his wife, Mary, a town girl who hates the bush and viciously abuses the black South Africans who work on their farm. But after many years, trapped by poverty, sapped by the heat of their tiny house, the lonely and frightened Mary turns to Moses, the black cook, for kindness and understanding.