The Children of Violence is a sequence of five semi-autobiographical novels by British
Nobel Prize in Literature-winner
Doris Lessing:
''
Martha Quest
''Martha Quest'' (1952) is the second novel of British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing, and the first of the five-volume semi-autobiographical ''Children of Violence'' series, which traces Martha Quest’s life to middle age. The ...
'' (1952), ''
A Proper Marriage
''A Proper Marriage'' (1954) is the second novel in British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing five volume, semi-autobiographical, series, ''Children of Violence''. The first volume is '' Martha Quest'' (1952), and the others are, '' ...
'' (1954), ''
A Ripple from the Storm
''A Ripple from the Storm'' (1958) is the third novel in British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing five volume, semi-autobiographical, series, ''Children of Violence''. The first volume is ''Martha Quest'' (1952), and the others are ...
'' (1958), ''
Landlocked'' (1965), and ''
The Four-Gated City
''The Four-Gated City'', published in 1969, is the concluding novel in British Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing's five-volume, semi-autobiographical series '' The Children of Violence'', which she began, in 1952, with ''Martha Quest''. In ...
'' (1969).
[Fro]
the dust jacket of the first edition
of ''The Four-Gated City''. The novels "are strongly influenced by Lessing's rejection of a domestic family role and her involvement with communism." Lessing identifies the sequence as a ''
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...
''.
The series follows the life of protagonist Martha Quest from adolescence until her death, which takes place in the future, in the year 1997. The first four novels are set during the 1930s and 1940s, in the fictional country of Zambesia, based on the former
British colony of
Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kno ...
(now
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...
), where Lessing lived from 1925 until 1949.
DorisLessing.org
/ref> The fifth work, ''The Four-Gated City'', is set in London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, primarily in the 1950s and 1960s. The novel's appendix extends into a dystopian future in which Britain has become uninhabitable due to an unspecified catastrophe, speculated to be either a nuclear detonation
A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, t ...
or mass contamination from chemical weapons
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...
following a fire at Porton Down
Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl ...
.
References
Novels by Doris Lessing
Novel series
20th-century British novels
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