The Grandmothers

'Lessing's prose is as vigorous in these stories as it has ever been. She has an extraordinary feel not only for landscape but also for the human creature within it.' The Times

'In these four tales Lessing shows her adaptability, and her capacity to unify the most far-flung territories of human experience. Like all great writers, she brings a multitudinous sensibility to bear on individual people, on single rooms, on particular moments - and she makes them live.' Daily Telegraph

'Doris Lessing has changed the way we think about the world.' Blake Morrison

'Thank goodness for Doris Lessing. While the rest of us flounder about noisily in the muddy waters of life, she never fails to expose with startling clarity the essential folly of our dreams and good intentions.' Kate Chisholm, Evening Standard

'She's up there in the pantheon with Balzac and George Eliot. We're lucky she's still writing.' Lisa Appignanesi, Independent

'She has an extraordinary feeling for the peculiar vulnerabilities of the young and the elderly. And her portraits of human relationships are of quite staggering beauty.' Ruth Scurr, The Times