THIS WAS THE OLD CHIEF'S COUNTRY, collected African stories, volume one

418pp., paperback, Reprint, (1951) 2003

"It can be said of all white-dominated Africa that it was - and still is - the Old Chief's Country. So all the stories I write of a certain kind I think of as belonging under that heading: tales about white people, sometimes about black people, living in a landscape that not so very long ago was settled by black tribes, living in complex societies that the white people are only just beginning to study, let alone understand." Doris Lessing, from the Preface

"In story after story, Doris Lessing portrays the helpless collisions and alienations of the races ... One brings away a sense of the sheer human impossibility of South Africa, as a place fit only for habitation by the imagination of exiles and of children. All else seems lost, betrayed and spoiled, except the glare of the sun, the dust, the boulders. An impressive collection." Gabriel Pearson, Daily Telegraph

"Doris Lessing's sense of setting is so immediate, the touch and taste of her continent is so strong, that Africa seems to become the universe." Newsweek

Doris Lessing (1919-2013) was born of British parents in Persia (now Iran), grew up on a farm in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and moved to England in 1949. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983). She was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature and the 2001 David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature.