Alfred and Emily - Softcover

"Alfred and Emily reveals why Lessing deserved literature's highest honor. There is a remarkable level of courage, honesty, and wisdom in Alfred and Emily. . . . Lessing, nearing 90, continues to surprise."--USA Today

"An intriguing work . . . [that] shimmers with precisely remembered details."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"A stirring exploration . . . gently yet deeply moving"--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A clever, moving coupling of fiction and nonfiction. ALFRED & EMILY is...a testament to [Lessing's] ongoing literary vitality."--Washington Post Book World

"An odd and powerful excursion into lost time. . . . a powerful reminder not only of Lessing's past but also of how each of us can return to our own and come back with something precious."--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"A truly intriguing piece of work...the book is also an interesting glimpse of an empire and an era."--Christian Science Monitor

"She has never displayed her potent imagination to better effect, or her gift for probing realism . . . a profoundly moving memoir and portrait of a marriage."--Wall Street Journal

"Lessing's taste for discomfiting truths is as evident as ever...as bracing and engaging as anything she has written."--Kirkus Reviews

An intriguing work . . . [that] shimmers with precisely remembered details. --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times"

An odd and powerful excursion into lost time. . . . a powerful reminder not only of Lessing s past but also of how each of us can return to our own and come back with something precious. --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review"

Alfred and Emily is an intimate and revealing book by Doris Lessing, the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature and author ofThe Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, that explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. After beginning with a novella that portrays the happier life her parents would have led had there been no war, Lessing proceeds to tell the story of their marriage as it actually was in this “intriguing work . . . [that] shimmers with precisely remembered details.” (Michiko Kakutani,New York Times)