The Good Terrorist - (Vintage International) by Doris Lessing (Paperback)

About the Book

A powerful contemporary novel about a group of would-be terrorists in London that Susan Brownmiller in Newsday called "a bone-tingling narrative that should stand as the crowning achievement of Lessing's distinguished career".

Book Synopsis

The Good Terrorist follows Alice Mellings, a woman who transforms her home into a headquarters for a group of radicals who plan to join the IRA. As Alice struggles to bridge her ideology and her bourgeois upbringing, her companions encounter unexpected challenges in their quest to incite social change against complacency and capitalism. With a nuanced sense of the intersections between the personal and the political, Nobel laureate Doris Lessing creates in The Good Terrorist a compelling portrait of domesticity and rebellion.

Review Quotes

"Powerful, effective, and page-turningly suspenseful." --The Christian Science Monitor"One of the best novels in English I have read about the terrorist mentality and the inner life of a revolutionary group." --Alison Lurie, The New York Review of Books"A fine novel, a work of strong and scrupulous realism, absolutely contemporary. . . . What set of circumstances will produce a terrorist act? Lessing provides a convincing explanation." --Marilynne Robinson, The Washington Post Book World"Engrossing.... It bristles with arresting situations and observations of character." --Newsweek

About the Author

Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books--novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. In 2007, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.