Martha Quest

Doris Lessing · 1919–2013 · United Kingdom / Zimbabwe

Why it matters

A restless teenager chafes against her parents' failing farm, colonial Rhodesia's petty racial codes, and her own contradictory ambitions in the opening volume of the five-book Children of Violence sequence. Lessing's own girlhood recast as the education of a reluctant rebel.

At a glance

A straightforward chronological coming-of-age narrative, accessible despite its political weight.