African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [214]
—Gene Lyons, Entertainment Weekly
“The human raw material of hope is present [in Zimbabwe], and it is in dealing with human raw material that Doris Lessing has always excelled.”
—Christopher Hitchens, Newsday
“Incredibly powerful reading.”
—Louise Bernikow, Cosmopolitan
“Inimitably forthright…. Always the fair-minded realist, Lessing isn’t overly optimistic about the future, but her sympathetic account of Zimbabwe’s struggle to forge a common destiny is most worthwhile.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A powerfully written, passionately felt memoir by a writer of conscience.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Highly recommended…. A fascinating look at life in Zimbabwe from someone who has an intimate knowledge of the country.”
—Library Journal
Also by Doris Lessing
NOVELS
The Grass Is Singing
The Golden Notebook
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
The Summer Before the Dark
The Memoirs of a Survivor
The Diaries of Jane Somers:
The Diary of a Good Neighbor
If the Old Could…
The Good Terrorist
The Fifth Child
“Canopus in Argos: Archives” series
Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta
The Marriages Between Zones
Three, Four and Five
The Sirian Experiments
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire
“Children of Violence” series
Martha Quest
A Proper Marriage
A Ripple from the Storm
Landlocked
The Four-Gated City
SHORT STORIES
This Was the Old Chiefs Country
The Habit of Loving
A Man and Two Women
The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other stories
Stories
African Stories
The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches
OPERA
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (Music by Philip Glass)
POETRY
Fourteen Poems
NONFICTION
In Pursuit of the English
Particularly Cats
Going Home
A Small Personal Voice
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
The Wind Blows Away Our Words
Particularly Cats…and Rufus
The Doris Lessing Reader
Copyright
AFRICAN LAUGHTER: FOUR VISITS TO ZIMBABWE. Copyright © 1992 by Doris Lessing. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195201-2
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* Doctor Huggins was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia for many years. During Federation, as Lord Malvern, he was Prime Minister of the Federation for the year 1956 while Garfield Todd was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia.
* South Africa is usually referred to as The Republic.
* I am told the word ‘tribe’ is unacceptable. One should say, ethnic group. But everyone knows what ‘tribe’ means. Most people I think would find ‘ethnic group’ confusing, certainly at the time this book is being written.
* Farm animals have at regular intervals to be made to swim through a bath of chemically treated water to kill