ABSTRACT
Yet there are other traditions in the English-language novel, even if those who follow them are themselves often the products o f other cultures: they may be termed the heirs o f Conrad, the Polish author o f the greatest corpus o f political fiction written in English since Sir Walter Scott. N o one could, for instance, accuse Doris Lessing or Nadine Gordimer o f failing to examine the nature o f politics and the consequences
Doris Lessing (Photograph © Miriam Berkley)
o f political action. Lessing, brought up in Southern Rhodesia, sometime member o f the Com munist Party, has always been keenly aware o f the effect o f economic forces on ideology. She attacked the colour bar, long before it was fashionable to do so, and may be regarded as one o f the literary pioneers o f the W omen’s Movement. Her best work was done before the period under review, which indeed she chiefly occupied with a five-volume work The Canopus in Argos Archives (1979-83). These science fiction novels revealed considerable power o f invention, marred by the arbitrary freedom and imaginative, as distinct from fanciful, inertia characteristic o f the genre. Nevertheless, her influence has been profound.
