Thousands of years in the future, all the northern hemisphere is buried under the ice and snow of a new Ice Age. At the southern end of a large landmass called Ifrik, two children of the Mahondi people, seven-year old Mara and her younger brother, Dann, are abducted from their home in the middle of the night. Raised as outsiders in a poor rural village, Mara and Dann learn to survive the hardships and dangers of a life threatened as much by an unforgiving climate and menacing animals as by a hostile community of Rock People. Eventually they join the great human migration North, away from the drought that is turning the southern land to dust, and in search of a place with enough water and food to support human life. Traveling across the continent, the siblings enter cities rife with crime, power struggles, and corruption, learning as much about human nature as about how societies function. With a clear-eyed vision of the human condition, Mara and Dann is imaginative fiction at its best.
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Eventually, conditions grow so bad in Ifrik that an entire continent of people begin a great northern migration. As Mara and Dann walk the length of the land, Lessing takes the opportunity to comment on the lost cities and vanished civilizations whose remains dot the landscape. That these ancient ruins belong to our civilization makes Mara's curiosity about them resonate eerily. Danger dogs every step; the children are captured by different, warring groups and their destinies take very different paths. A political novelist first and foremost, Lessing uses her futuristic fable to comment on the sins and foibles of humanity as it is now--on war and slavery, sexism and racism--and on its one saving grace, the ability to love. --Margaret Prior
Winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, Doris Lessing was one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of our time, the recipient of a host of international awards. She wrote more than thirty books—among them the novels Martha Quest, The Golden Notebook, and The Fifth Child. She died in 2013.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. SIGNED STORED NEW PRISTINE CONDITION SANITIZED THEN WRAPPED. Signed by Author(s). Book. Seller Inventory # ABE-1669660079107
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. 1st Edition. First printing. Correct number sequence including the 1. Very Fine in a very fine dust jacket. A tight, clean copy, new and unread. Comes with archival-quality mylar dust jacket protector. Price intact on front jacket flap. Shipped in well padded box. SIGNED AND DATED BY AUTHOR on title page in month of publication, April 1999--the author's name and date only, with no other marks or writing. Purchased new and opened only for author signature. You cannot find a better copy. Seller Inventory # signed-british-lndy-0002