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Review
‘I hope everyone reads Mara and Dann and it wins all the prizes.’ Victoria Glendinning, Literary Review
‘An outstanding piece of storytelling… rich and imaginative.’
Helen Dunmore, Daily Mail
‘Fascinating and profoundly curious.’ Rachel Cusk, Daily Express
Product Description
A visionary novel from Doris Lessing, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007.
It is sooner than you might think. And the earth’s climate is much changed – it’s colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home…
They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, but this new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children’s constant companions. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures that bring them through to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew.
Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we only dimly perceive and scarcely know how to value.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In her novel, Mrs Lessing depicts the epic adventure of Mara and her brother Dann who live in the distant future on the African continent, then called Ifrik. Its centre is plagued by an incessant drought whereas its northern part is permanently covered by a coat of ice. Mara and Dann are respectively seven and four when they become orphans. They are brought to a place called The Rock Village and it is Daima who takes care of them. A few years later they begin their epic journey from the centre of Ifrik to its northern part where there is more water and consequently more food. During their trip they come across all kinds of primitive peoples living in very poor conditions and in many instances Dann and Mara have to fight in order to survive.
It is an apocalyptic world which Mrs Lessing imagined for her novel. One in which people live in tribe-like colonies and behave in a very aggressive manner toward each other. It is a world in which all scientific knowledge has been lost and in which there is no more room for culture or art. There are cities which were once splendid and now have either turned into ruins or have been submerged by floods. Nature has become so hostile that it is barely possible for people to inhabit the centre of Ifrik. There are giant spiders, water dragons, enormous lizards and huge beetles who can bisect a child with their pincers. A frightening vision of the future of our planet indeed.
Readers will no doubt be comforted by the fact that there are still authors today who manage to write a powerful adventure story without resorting to the tedious ingredients of guns, cars, explosions, terrorists, FBI/CIA & Co. and billions of dollars.
It is an apocalyptic world which Mrs Lessing imagined for her novel. One in which people live in tribe-like colonies and behave in a very aggressive manner toward each other. It is a world in which all scientific knowledge has been lost and in which there is no more room for culture or art. There are cities which were once splendid and now have either turned into ruins or have been submerged by floods. Nature has become so hostile that it is barely possible for people to inhabit the centre of Ifrik. There are giant spiders, water dragons, enormous lizards and huge beetles who can bisect a child with their pincers. A frightening vision of the future of our planet indeed.
Readers will no doubt be comforted by the fact that there are still authors today who manage to write a powerful adventure story without resorting to the tedious ingredients of guns, cars, explosions, terrorists, FBI/CIA & Co. and billions of dollars.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My imagination was captured by this book from the start. I picked it up in a book shop intrigued by the blurb on the back cover. Set in the future (the next ice age) where all the world is ice except (so far as we know) the continent of Africa (Ifrik) the story follows the quest of a brother and sister in finding the most basic of human requirements: water and food. They travel through much of the continent growing from children to adults, physically and mentally.
Lessing paints a very believable picture of a planet suffering the double effects of ice age and human arrogance, which she uses as the background to the story of Mara and Dann. It has a very female perspective without being a political statement. I recommend it.
Lessing paints a very believable picture of a planet suffering the double effects of ice age and human arrogance, which she uses as the background to the story of Mara and Dann. It has a very female perspective without being a political statement. I recommend it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mara and Dann are two young children travelling across Ifrik (Africa), travelling North, away from the desert and wasteland of the South. This is a re-write of one of the oldest stories - the brother and sister who survive war and famine, and eventually come to some sort of home, a sort of futuristic Isis and Osiris. And I'm not giving anything away there, Doris Lessing makes this point herself in the preface. Set against the backdrop of a new Ice Age, this book gently points out the flaws in our own society by showing what happens when humans run out of water, food and ultimately hope. Beautifully written and very gripping.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A long journey
Some time in the future, perhaps 50 years or a thousand years away, two very young children set off on a journey north across Ifrik (Africa), one of two continents in the world not... Read more
Published 14 months ago by elkiedee
an entertaining but uneven book
this reads like a book written by two different people.The first part is beautifully written and set in a parched and devastated landscape imagined with such immediacy and impact... Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2002
An epic journey of discovery - of the world and of the self
By using simple sentence construction and particular expressions, Doris Lessing conveys a tangible sense of Africa-ness which is so authentic that it acts as the hook which pulls... Read more
Published on 21 Jan 2001 by Mrs G Moss
an exciting adventure
She's done it again. She's written another book that you are sad when you've finished reading it. A completely engrossing story with fascinating characters who you feel you... Read more
Published on 2 Sep 2000
a compelling read
I hadn't heard much about this book, and just picked it up on impulse one day. It is a subtle, compelling read, following the lives of two African children as they journey north... Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2000
a triumph of the imagination
Mara and Dann grips the reader from the first page onwards. As always Doris Lessing has managed to take us into another domain while never allowing us to lose sight of reality. Read more
Published on 19 Aug 1999
huge imaginative vistas
From almost the first page, Mara and Dann seemed to take over my imagination - each night as I read it, my dreams became great vistas from Mrs Lessing's vivid tableaux. Read more
Published on 7 Jun 1999
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