The Grass is Singing. Doris Lessing

      Doris Lessing

      

      The Grass is Singing

       Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      

      Fourth Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1980, Paladin 1989, as a Flamingo Modern Classic 1994 (reprinted 9 times), and as a Harper Perennial Modern Classic 2007 (reprinted 9 times)

      

      First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1950

      

      Copyright © Doris Lessing 1950

      

      Doris Lessing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      

      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 ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 ebooks

      

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780586089248

      Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007386307 Version: 2016-10-21

      To Mrs GLADYS MAASDORP of Southern Rhodesia for whom I feel the greatest affection and admiration

      In this decayed hole among the mountains

      In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

      Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

      There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

      It has no windows, and the door swings,

      Dry bones can harm no one.

      Only a cock stood on the rooftree

      Co co rico, co co rico

      In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

      Bringing rain

      

      Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

      Waited for rain, while the black clouds

      Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

      The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

      Then spoke the thunder

      

      From The Waste Land by T. S. ELIOT with grateful acknowledgements to the author and to Messrs Faber & Faber

      ‘It is by the failures and misfits of a civilization that one can best judge its weaknesses.’

      AUTHOR UNKNOWN

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

1

2

3

4

5

6

       7

       8

       9

       10

       11

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       Read On

       The Golden Notebook

       The Good Terrorist

       Love, Again

       The Fifth Child

       About the Publisher

       1

      MURDER MYSTERY

       By Special Correspondent

      Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner, a farmer at Ngesi, was found murdered on the front verandah of their homestead yesterday morning. The houseboy, who has been arrested, has confessed to the crime. No motive has been discovered.

      It