African Laughter

(Paperback)

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In this portrait of Doris Lessing's homeland, the author recounts the visits she made to Zimbabwe in 1982, 1988, 1989 and 1992, after being banned from the old Southern Rhodesia for 25 years for her political views and opposition to the minority white Government. The visits constitute a journey to the heart of a country whose history, landscape, people and spirit are evoked by the author in a narrative of detail. She embraces every facet of life in Zimbabwe from the lost animals in the bush to political corruption, from AIDS to a successful communal enterprise created by rural blacks, and notes the kind of changes that can only be appreciated by one who has lived there before.

Reviews

An eloquent statement, one of the strengths of this account of a nations tragedy is that Doris Lessing evokes not sadness but laughter. She describes this as the marvellous African laughter born somewhere in the gut, seizing the whole body with good-humoured philosophy. It is the laughter of poor people. TLS

Innumerable conversations - of Africans, among them poets and teachers and cooks; of whites, some of whom have taken the Gap to South Africa then returned, disillusioned - contribute to Doris Lessings picture of the new Zimbabwe. Enthralling, significant and provocative. Independent

African Laughter conveys a country and its people more completely than any other book I have read. It is filled with stories, anecdotes, newspaper cuttings , poems, obituaries, songs, even Doris Lessings synosis for a film - the cumulative effect is extraordinary. As well as a remarkable immediacy, the narrative has an irrepressible physical vigour which reflects perfectly the vitality of the Zimbabwean people. Daily Telegraph

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.