The Four-Gated City (Children of Violence Series #5)

by Doris Lessing

Overview

"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way, and it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do." — Barbara Kingsolver

The Children of Violence series, a quintet of novels tracing the life of Martha Quest, from her childhood in Africa to a post-nuclear Britain of AD 2000, first established Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, as a great radical writer. 

In this, the fifth and final volume, Marth, now middle-aged, leaves Africa for post-war London. As housekeeper to the Coldridge family, she watches the children in her care, the new 'children of violence', grow up in a disintegrating world, a world careering toward nuclear disaster.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062047946
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/19/2010
Series:	Children of Violence Series , #5
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	672
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

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.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

October 22, 1919

Place of Birth:

Persia (now Iran)

What People are Saying About This

Joyce Carol Oates

"A powerful, prophetic, mysterious work, a truly extraordinary novel....The insanity of the 20th century...[and] the mystery of the self, explored brilliantly here as it is in her other masterpiece The Golden Notebook....Here is a book not to be read, but experienced."

Barbara Kingsolver

"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way, and it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do."

Editorial Reviews

I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way, and it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do.

Barbara Kingsolver

A powerful, prophetic, mysterious work, a truly extraordinary novel....The insanity of the 20th century...[and] the mystery of the self, explored brilliantly here as it is in her other masterpiece The Golden Notebook....Here is a book not to be read, but experienced.

Joyce Carol Oates

This work will rank with the foremost fictional commentaries on events in our century.

Milwaukee Journal

"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way, and it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do." — Barbara Kingsolver

"A powerful, prophetic, mysterious work, a truly extraordinary novel....The insanity of the 20th century...[and] the mystery of the self, explored brilliantly here as it is in her other masterpiece The Golden Notebook....Here is a book not to be read, but experienced." — Joyce Carol Oates

"One of the most remarkable feats in contemporary fiction." — Chicago Daily News

From the Publisher

"One of the most remarkable feats in contemporary fiction."

Chicago Daily News