The Good Terrorist

(Paperback)

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A hugely significant political novel for the late twentieth century from one of the outstanding writers of the modern era and winner of the Nobel Prize for Fiction.
In a London squat a band of bourgeois revolutionaries are united by a loathing of the waste and cruelty they see around them. These maladjusted malcontents try desperately to become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence. Only Alice seems capable of organising anything. Motherly, practical and determined, she is also easily exploited by the group and ideal fodder for a more dangerous and potent cause. Eventually their nave radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, but the aftermath is not as exciting as they had hoped. Nonetheless, while they may not have changed the world, their lives will never be the same again

Reviews

In The Good Terrorist we are in the world of the subsidized sub-culture of the Marxist groupuscules of contemporary BritainLessing has a wit, an indignation and a narrative agility which leave few left-wing sacred cows unscathedhugely enjoyable. Sunday Times

Doris Lessing writes about the parts other novelists cannot reach. This is a totally absorbing, subtly observed, complicated and stimulating novel. Observer

The Good Terrorist is a work of acute intelligence, incisive and compellingit shows Doris Lessing at her mature best. Listener

Praise for Doris Lessing:

Doris Lessing has changed the way we think about the world. Blake Morrison

Thank goodness for Doris Lessing. While the rest of us flounder about noisily in the muddy waters of life, she never fails to expose with startling clarity the essential folly of our dreams and good intentions. Kate Chisholm, Evening Standard

Shes up there in the pantheon with Balzac and George Eliot. Were lucky shes still writing. Lisa Appignanesi, Independent

Author Bio

Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.