ESSENTIAL DORIS LESSING CD: EXCERPTS FROM THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK READ BY THE AUTHOR ALFRED & EMILY

In this extraordinary book, Lessing offers a moving meditation on parents and children, war and memory, as she explores the lives of her parents, two individuals irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of Alfred & Emily, Lessing imagines the happier lives her parents might have led had there been no war. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the war, the family’s move to Africa, and the impact of their strained union on their daughter, a young woman growing up in a strange land.