The Four-Gated City

The Four-Gated City
Doris Lessing

The fifth and final book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s ‘Children of Violence’ series tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa to old age in post-nuclear Britain.‘The Four-Gated City’ finds Martha Quest in 1950s London and very much part of the social history of the time: the Cold War, the anti-nuclear Aldermaston Marches, Swinging London, the deepening of poverty and social anarchy. Daring to go a step further – as Lessing so often has in her career – the novel ends with the century in the throes of World War Three.In the four previous novels of the ‘Children of Violence’ series, Lessing explored the end of an epoch. Here she trains her gaze on the present – and the future. The disquieting power of her vision revealed across this series finds its culmination in this brave and visionary work.

MODERN CLASSIC

The Four-Gated City

Doris Lessing

Book Five of the ‘Children of Violence’ series

Dedication

Once upon a time there was a fool who was sent to buy flour and salt. He took a dish to carry his purchases.

‘Make sure,’ said the man who sent him, ‘not to mix the two things – I want them separate.’

When the shopkeeper had filled the dish with flour and was measuring out the salt, the fool said: ‘Do not mix it with the flour; here, I will show you where to put it.’

And he inverted the dish, to provide, from its upturned bottom, a surface upon which the salt could be laid.

The flour, of course, fell to the floor.

But the salt was safe.

When the fool got back to the man who had sent him, he said: ‘Here is the salt.’

‘Very well,’ said the other man, ‘but where is the flour?’

‘It should be here,’ said the fool, turning the dish over.

As soon as he did that, the salt fell to the ground, and the flour, of course, was seen to be gone.

A dervish teaching story, from

The Way of the Sufi, by IDRIES SHAH

Contents

Cover (#u1e0b0a00-bb26-5d65-9122-095930f0486b)

Title Page (#ubf2edbff-a550-5339-81ba-ee80b62161eb)

Part One (#u2e704956-a6c2-5e1a-9cd8-bd96f2ab27ad)

Chapter One (#u5abaa96a-2fc2-5ba3-9f15-183c13ef8f22)

Chapter Two (#u8e6e6aef-614b-5077-88e6-00c6288db426)

Chapter Three (#u35d9a44a-dc8d-5628-846d-9e136e71e1c6)

Chapter Four (#ub64ad90f-b8db-51eb-b6e0-f3ab63bd908a)

Part Two (#u0fc33548-66a7-56e2-a3e7-ba7ba8c932af)

Chapter One (#u1374c9fa-366f-5b11-afc9-6a6a94e11f37)

Chapter Two (#u031e2a27-77d1-5021-af2e-3def5df8dbc2)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Appendix (#litres_trial_promo)

Author’s Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

Read On (#litres_trial_promo)

The Grass is Singing (#litres_trial_promo)

The Golden Notebook (#litres_trial_promo)

The Good Terrorist (#litres_trial_promo)