The Summer Before the Dark

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing's classic novel of the pivotal summer in one woman's life is a brilliant excursion into the terrifying gulf between youth and old age. As the summer begins, Kate Brownattractive, intelligent, forty-five, happily married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown childrenhas no reason to expect that anything will change. But by summer's end the woman she wasliving behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caringno longer exists.The Summer Before the Darktakes us along on Kate's journey: from London to Turkey to Spain, from husband to lover to madness, on the road to a frightening new independence and a confrontation with herself that lets her finally and truly come of age.

Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books—novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. In 2007, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.