PARTICULARLY CATS . AND RUFUS (Revised Edition)

Lessing, Doris May

ISBN 10: 0394586719 / ISBN 13: 9780394586717

Published by Alfred A. Knopf Inc, New York, NY, 1991

About this Item

BRAND NEW COPY. Dustjacket under mylar. British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer short story writer and winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize Doris May Lessing (1919 - 2013) is celebrated for The Grass is Singing (1950). Born in Persia (Iran) and raised on a bush farm in Southern Rhodesia (Zimwabe) shared with many, many (one time, 40; some feral) cats. First published 1967; this is the Revised Edition of 1991. Biographies of cats Doris Lessing has known, and in particular, Grey Cat and Black Cat, who, both in part Siamese, are as different in character, temperament and tastes as two people cn be . the volume of philosophical musings on cats and humans.

Seller Inventory # 014618

Bibliographic Details

• Title: PARTICULARLY CATS . AND RUFUS (Revised Edition)
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Inc, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394586719
• ISBN 13: 9780394586717
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: James McMullan (Illustrators)
• Edition: Revised Edition, First Thus
• Condition: NEW - COLLECTIBLE
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Pets, Pet Care, Dogs, Cats, Birds, Fish
  • Biography, Autobiography, Memoir
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

The distinguished novelist reveals her life among the felines in portraits of the cats that she has known

Reviews

"Knowing cats, a lifetime of cats, what is left is a sediment of sorrow quite different from that due to humans: compounded of pain for their helplessness, of guilt on behalf of us all." Sentimentality, even about cats, should not be expected of Lessing ( The Four-Gated City ) here; readers may find this severe and often violent memoir grim and wholly sobering. It is also filled with an unfailing, occasionally unearthly empathy for the animals. Perhaps the tone of the book is due in part to the author's upbringing: in the first chapter, she recounts a story from her early years on an African farm, when her father solved the problem of an overpopulation of cats by collecting and shooting dozens of them in a room ("The cats that were still uncaught had sensed their fate and were raging and screaming all over the bush"). Convinced while still young of the brutishness of existence, Lessing maintained a rapt yet oddly detached interest in cats as fellow sufferers and would-be survivors. Here she recalls the lives (and woes) of sundry cats and sidelong humans with a compelling, almost metaphysical, darkness. Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.