Doris Lessing's large body of fiction deals with a number of political issues, and the ways in which they affect the lives of individuals. Many of her novels are set in colonial South Africa, exploring the experiences of those living there. Many also explore the intellectual excitement and eventual disillusionment with young communism. Finally, the political and romantic experiences of women, especially women coping with colonial Africa and the communist party, form an important theme.
Martha Quest
The five books in the Children of Violence series (1952-1969) follow the life of a young woman, Martha Quest, from her childhood and first marriage in colonial South Africa to her immigration to London. Throughout the series, Martha finds herself torn between a conventional life, with marriage and family, and the life of an intellectual and and political activist in the young Communist Party. Martha finds herself frustrated with and constrained by both, but lacking any other alternative as a young woman. The series provides a window into both the excitement and the problems of communism when it was still a vivacious intellectual movement, before the cold war. Martha's experiences also show the particular struggles of women searching for meaning beyond the limited roles allotted them in both intellectual circles and married life.
The Golden Notebook
Like the Martha Quest books, The Golden Notebook (1962) describes the political, intellectual, and erotic worlds available to young women of her generation by presenting the experiences of a single, fictional character in elaborate detail. The novel consists of four diaries of a writer named Anna, each colored notebook describing a separate aspect of her formative experiences: her life in Africa, her involvement and eventual disappointment with communism, a fictional work, and diary. Each of the stories intertwine with the other, and all become challenging as Anna falls in love and experiences the possibility of mental illness.
Science Fiction
Lessing has also written a number of works which fall into the genre of science fiction, using the freedoms that such writing provides to explore a variety of political issues in vivid, tangible ways. For example, the two books The Fifth Child (1988) and Ben, In the World (2000) examine human aggression and violence as in-born traits. Both feature Ben, a child born with an exaggerated, innate tendency toward violence unchecked by reason, and how he experiences childhood and, later, an independent life as an adult.
Mara and Dann (1999) explores the social effects of radical climate change, following a brother and sister as they journey North from Africa to Europe. The children are nearly the last to leave their home -- an Africa which is re-warming after a long ice age -- and the challenges they face have as much to do with the greed and desperation of human beings under extreme pressure as with the extreme drought itself.
The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980), the second of a series of five books Lessing describes as "space fiction" provides a mechanism for exploring the relationships between men and women by describing an intermarriage between two radically different societies: one peaceful and feminine, one warlike and male-dominated.
