Shikasta (Voyager Classics): Re-colonised Planet 5 - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Doris Lessing was born in Persia in 1919 and brought up in Rhodesia. She first came to England in 1949 and her first novel was published in 1950. She is now widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the twentieth century.

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"'Shikasta' is at once a brief history of the world, a tract against human destructiveness, an ode to the natural beauties of this earth and a hymn to the music of the spheres."

The story of the final days of our planet is told through the reports of Johor, an emissary sent from Canopus. Twentieth-century Earth, named 'Shikasta, the stricken' by the kindly, paternalistic Canopeans who colonised it many centuries ago, is under the influence of the evil empire of Puttiora. War, famine, disease and environmental disasters ravage the planet. To Johor, mankind is a 'totally crazed species', racing towards annihilation: his orders to save humanity set him what seems to be an impossible task.

Blending myth, fable and allegory, Doris Lessing's astonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the history of our own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction.