The Grass is Singing

The Grass is Singing
Doris Lessing

The Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing’s first novel is a taut and tragic portrayal of a crumbling marriage, set in South Africa during the years of Arpartheid.Doris Lessing brought the manuscript of ‘The Grass is Singing’ with her when she left Southern Rhodesia and came to England in 1950. When it was first published it created an impact whose reverberations we are still feeling, and immediately established itself as a landmark in twentieth-century literature.Set in Rhodesia, it tells the story of Dick Turner, a failed white farmer and his wife, Mary, a town girl who hates the bush. Trapped by poverty, sapped by the heat of their tiny brick and iron house, Mary, lonely and frightened, turns to Moses, the black cook, for kindness and understanding.A masterpiece of realism, ‘The Grass is Singing’ is a superb evocation of Africa’s majestic beauty, an intense psychological portrait of lives in confusion and, most of all, a passionate exploration of the ideology of white supremacy.

Doris Lessing

The Grass is Singing

Copyright (#ulink_f7da0af2-5517-55fd-b136-bb23e8a5e5a7)

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1980, Paladin 1989, as a Flamingo Modern Classic 1994 (reprinted 9 times), and as a Harper Perennial Modern Classic 2007 (reprinted 9 times)

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1950

Copyright © Doris Lessing 1950

Doris Lessing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780586089248

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007386307

Version: 2016-10-21

To Mrs GLADYS MAASDORP of Southern Rhodesia for whom I feel the greatest affection and admiration

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico, co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

From The Waste Land by T. S. ELIOT with grateful acknowledgements to the author and to Messrs Faber & Faber

‘It is by the failures and misfits of a civilization that one can best judge its weaknesses.’

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#ua1372184-d5f4-5475-b9bd-a3593a73e2a0)

Title Page (#u86a44cad-adb9-59fb-9b30-87d63ab6f969)

Copyright (#u61bf574f-512e-5844-b332-de41ab2e58ff)

Dedication (#u3c5a8c4b-457f-5243-ad19-2a4fe5c79d79)

Epigraph (#u020ae92b-2dc7-599b-82c5-7db5f9bf29ff)

1 (#ua504b9a9-04dd-5241-a702-a0120c79ce65)

2 (#u4cd4abcd-ca53-561f-8250-9fb769858880)

3 (#ucaee6684-6f1d-5e55-934c-22b32b35f6b0)

4 (#udee454b1-c191-5c65-820c-dff5b652c744)

5 (#u4c1ea382-9e11-5569-84bc-7b2165c652a6)

6 (#ua016b20c-0a89-5e29-a746-35497058f14f)