Briefing for a descent into hell

Lessing, Doris.

ISBN 10: 0224005073 / ISBN 13: 9780224005074

Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 1971

About this Item

Interesting provenance - has the bookplate of Naomi Mitchison to the ffep (novelist and poet. "doyenne of Scottish literature").
First edition first impression. Not price-clipped. No inscriptions. The top edge of the jacket (above the protective sleeve) is rubbed, there is a very slight shelf-lean (2mm). VG/VG.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1771762085973

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Briefing for a descent into hell
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London
• Publication Date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224005073
• ISBN 13: 9780224005074
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 0.395 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

An extraordinary blend of fantasy and realism, this is classic Lessing. Penniless, rambling and incoherent, a man is found wandering at night on London's Embankment. Taken to hospital and heavily sedated, he tells the doctors of his incredible fantastical voyage, adrift on the ocean, landing on unknown shores, flying on the back of a huge white bird. Identified as Charles Walker, a Cambridge Classics professor, he is visited by family and friends, each revealing clues to the nature of his breakdown: both his young wife, Felicity, and his mistress, Constance, have been troubled by his cold detachment; his fellow dons are bewildered by Watkins's recent anti-social outburst and anarchistic theories on the futility of education. As the doctors try to cure him, Watkins begins a fierce battle to hold on to his magnificent inner world, as it gradually acquires a greater reality than the everyday! An extraordinary blend of fantasy and realism, 'Briefing for a Descent into Hell' is one of Doris Lessing's most brilliantly achieved novels; it links her early work, which explored the nature of subjectivity, with her later experiments in science fiction. Its stunning indictment of the tyranny of society -- one of the perennial themes of Lessing's writing -- is powerful, disturbing and, as always, magnificently rendered.

From the Inside Flap

A fascinating look inside the mind of a man who is supposedly "mad."