The Grass Is Singing

Set in South Africa under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is both a riveting chronicle of human disintegration and a beautifully understated social critique. Mary Turner, once a self-confident and independent young woman, becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an unsuccessful farmer. Over the years, the slow poison of farm life's ennui takes its toll, and Mary's despair deepens until the arrival of Moses, an enigmatic and virile Black servant. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses—master and slave—find themselves trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion. Their psychic tension eventually explodes in an electrifying climax, concluding a disturbing tale of racial strife in colonial South Africa. Blending Lessing's imaginative vision with her own vivid childhood memories, the novel recreates the quiet horror of a woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.

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