Doris Lessing

eBook, ePUB

The Fifth Child (eBook, ePUB)

Beschreibung

Doris Lessing's contemporary gothic horror storycentered on the birth of a baby who seems less than humanprobes society's unwillingness to recognize its own brutality.Harriet and David Lovatt, parents of four children, have created an idyll of domestic bliss in defiance of the social trends of late 1960s England. While around them crime and unrest surge, the Lovatts are certain that their old-fashioned contentment can protect them from the world outsideuntil the birth of their fifth baby. Gruesomely goblin-like in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong and violent, Ben has nothing innocent or infant-like about him. As he grows older and more terrifying, Harriet finds she cannot love him, David cannot bring himself to touch him, and their four older children are afraid of him. Understanding that he will never be accepted anywhere, Harriet and David are torn between their instincts as parents and their shocked reaction to this fierce and unlovable child whose existence shatters their belief in a benign world.

Technische Details

• Geräte: eReader
• mit Kopierschutz
• Größe: 1.79MB
• FamilySharing(5)

Barrierefreiheit

• Text-to-Speech
• Alle Texte können hinsichtlich Größe, Schriftart und Farbe angepasst werden
• Inhalte verständlich ohne Farbwahrnehmung
• Navigierbares Inhaltsverzeichnis für direkten Zugriff auf Text und Medien

Autor

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 booksnovels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. In 2007, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Zur Autorenwelt

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Seitenzahl: 144
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. November 2010
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780307777645
• Artikelnr.: 39249158

Rezensionen

A hair-raising tale as full of twists and shocks as any page turner could desire. Time Terse and chilling . A witch s brew of conflicting fears. The New York Review of Books A horror story of maternity and the nightmare of social collapse . A moral fable of the genre that includes Mary Shelley s Frankenstein and George Orwell s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The New York Times Book Review

'"The Fifth Child" has the intensity of a nightmare, a horror story poised somewhere between a naturalistic account of family life and an allegory that draws on science fiction. Read it and tremble.' Clare Tomalin, Independent

'"The Fifth Child" is a book to send shivers down your spine, but one which it is impossible to put down until it is finished. Doris Lessing's power to captivate and convince is evident from the first, and the effect of the odd, alien child on the family is conveyed with quiet understatement which adds to the mounting sense of horror.' Sunday Times

'A disturbing vision, "The Fifth Child" offers a faithful if chilling reflection of the world we live in.' Sunday Telegraph