Doris May Lessing

Mohammed Darweesh

This story of a family, spanning most of the 20th century, has its fulcrum in the 1960s. The young of that time, breaking free, were seen by some not as romantic idealists but as deeply damaged people. Old Julia, the clan's matriarch, knows why. "You can't have two dreadful wars and then say 'That's it, and now everything will go back to normal.' They're screwed up, our children, they are children of war." Remarkable women, Julia and Frances, grandmother and mother, fight for "the kids" against all obstacles. At the home's emotional centre, the kitchen table, the family sit around eating, joking, boasting about their shoplifting, debating current ideologies, which take some of them out to the Third World, one to a south African village dying of AIDS.

Mohammed Darweesh

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