Книги, похожие на «Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Fabulous»

Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, invites us to imagine a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society free from men.An old Roman senator embarks on what may be his last endeavour: the retelling of the story of human creation. He recounts the history of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic, coastal wilderness, in the valley of an overshadowing mountain. The Clefts have no need, or knowledge, of men – childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and their children are always female. But with the birth of a strange, new child – a boy – the harmony of their community is thrown into jeopardy.At first, the Clefts are awestruck by this seemingly malformed child, but as more and more of these threateningly unfamiliar males appear, they are rejected, and are exposed on the nearby mountainside, sacrificed to the patrolling eagles overhead. Unbeknownst to the Clefts, however, these baby males survive, aided by the eagles, and thrive on the other side of the mountain. It is not until a curious young Cleft named Maire goes beyond the geographical, and emotional, divide of the mountain that this disquieting fact is uncovered – forcing the Clefts to accept the prospect of a now shared world, and the possible vengeance of the wronged males.In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts head-on the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women, two similar and yet thoroughly distinct creatures, manage to live side by side in the world, and how the specifics of gender affect every aspect of our existence.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the second instalment in the visionary novel cycle ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’.This is the story of the kindly Queen of Zone Three, who rules a land free of all harshness, and her forced marriage with the soldier-king of Zone Four, which is hierarchic, disciplined, inflexible, dutiful. This apparently difficult marriage, unwanted by both, requires a compromise between impulse and reason, between instinct and logic.Ben Ata learns to accept and then to love the ruler of Zone Three and her alien ways; and she learns to love and to need him. But when the Queen is commanded by the Providers to return to her own realm, she must obey, shattering though it is to leave her husband and child. Ben Ata, in turn, is ordered to marry the savage beauty who rules Zone Five, a land that both unites and reverses the other two Zones.In ‘The Marriages …’ Doris Lessing uses science-fiction brilliantly to investigate the conflict between men and women. Once again, invented planets allow her to deploy her unillusioned knowledge of the real world of the reader.

A vivid, evocative, page-turning read that leaps off the page, with a dazzling recreation of the Renaissance diamond and gem trade.As the chaos of war spreads out across Europe, Charles V extends his empire in a series of ruthless and aggressive moves. The Medici Pope has formed an alliance to drive Charles out of Italy for good.Only England holds aloof from the great struggle that is to come. The 36-year-old Henry VIII presides over an opulent and glamorous court, thinking only of the woman with whom he has fallen in love.In the midst of this politically sensitive and dangerous world, steps Richard Dansey, a young and ambitious jewel merchant, determined to break his mother’s stranglehold on the family firm after his father’s early death.Richard’s reckless pursuit of jewels worthy of Henry’s wooing of Anne Boleyn, lead him across Europe to Venice and Rome. Obsessed with one diamond, but dangerously distracted by love, Richard finds himself thrust into the heart of the murderous politics of the Tudor court.‘The King’s Diamond’ is a story of obsession and love, in a world of political conniving and treachery, that grips from the first page.