Winter in July

by Doris Lessing

Forthright, incisive, controversial, Winter in July shows one of our most brilliant writers grappling with the most bitterly explosive issue of our age — Africa. Written with all the angry compassion of first-hand knowledge, these stories reveal Africa in the raw — an Africa unknown to the vast majority of Europeans. Here is a vivid, strong, unforgettable evocation of its sounds and smells, its stark power and savage grandeur, its agony and ultimate tragedy.

[Taken from the blurb]

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Nobel Prize, Literature, African Literature, Africa, British Literature

188 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seven short stories where Lessing explores isolation, culture and morality.

The Second Hut is where an English farmer with a wife who wants to return to England hired an Afrikaan to help on his farm. Carruther’s is shocked how Van Heerden lives in one hut with his wife and nine children. He decides to build a second hut. It goes wrong because of the brutality of Van Heerden with the African workers. Carruthers realizes he is fighting a losing battle with him deciding to return to England.

The Nuisance is horrible in the uncertainty whether the unwanted African woman committed suicide or was murdered. The callousness in the farmer not wanting any problems is vivid.

The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange is about people who are hired by Gale who are not liked by his wife. When the Kloof wife goes missing everything comes to a head. Gale’s wife has made a life for herself which cannot abide change especially with people she has nothing in common.

Little Tembi is a sad story where a farmers wife saves an African baby from death. He then becomes attached to her until she has children of her own. He becomes frustrated and confused reverting to stealing to get her attention. This story for me is about the evil of apartheid.

Old John’s Place seems jinxed. Wealthy people buy it and then try to fit in with the local commercial but are unable to. Thus becoming tolerated and eventually leaving with a new batch to take over. Its also about the promiscuity of the community and how they turn a blind eye.

Leopard George is about a successful wealthy hard working farmer who has African mistresses. Unwittingly he sleeps with one who is the wife of his elderly African friend. He then sends her away in the night and a leopard kills her. His life then becomes one of anger and he goes from conservationist to hunter.

Winter in July is about a woman sleeping with two brothers in a comfortable life. It falls apart when one of the brothers decides to marry as she is married to his brother. The woman struggles with what her life has been about.

The stories are well written with someone that uses the African landscape as a metaphor and captures the harshness, brutality and the lack of morality. All her characters are not very likable and struggle with their consciences mostly unsuccessfully.

[Mohammed Yusuf · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتابات نسوية بإمتياز مثلت فيها المرأة محور الكتابة وكذلك كان الحديث عن علاقة العرق الأبيض بالأسود وعن غربة و وطن لكليهما , عن الحب , الأمومة والعلاقات العائلية

كتابة ترتكز على الوصف ولكن كان من المفترض أن تكون أكثر شاعرية , السرد يمتص الحوارات لحتى كأنها لا تبين والشخصيات تزداد غموضاً وتتقاطع بألوان باهتة مع الحدث

[لونا · Rating 2 out of 5]

مجموعة قصص قصيرة تدور أحداثها في جنوب أفريقيا


بالمجمل ليست سيئة .. .. مستوى الترجمة متوسط

[alessandra falca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un racconto tratto dai “Racconti Africani”. La Lessing è brava a far salire la tensione. Dialoghi impeccabili. Un racconto sul senso della vita. Tre personaggi. Tutti e tre perfetti. Brava.

[S-Haq · Rating 3 out of 5]

ليس من الممتع جدا أن يكون المرء حثالة شىء ما، لكن حتى هذا له أشكال من" التعويض"
جميلة

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are well written and I tried very hard to see whether she was being tongue in cheek or trying to expose the stupidness of the racism within which the society depicted in these books is steeped. It was inconclusie whether she was tacitly allowing or very subtly undermining the racism.

I know we often get told "it was a different time" and we can't judge a book on the values of today but to me the fact of black people being fully human is not a "value" or a "philosophy" or an "idea" so just as I would feel uncomfortable reading about people eating children or something so racism like this makes for uncomfortable and not good reading. In any case when you say "people didn't know that" you mean white people as I am sure the black Africans of the time knew very well what racism was (whether or not a word existed for it) and knew how stupid it was. So only reading from the perspective of the racist gives us a skewed (and racist) view.

That admittedly happened on the borders and boundaries of the book, it was centred just enough to make me wonder if Lessing was beginning to understand the point of it. Her English characters tended to make up categories of othering every which way and pull and pluck at each other. Some seemed to wealthy there was no reason for them to even be in Africa but the last story had people who were making their fortune, it was portrayed as hard work. The women seemed to have horrible depressing lives and the men were portrayed as more attractive and desirable the less empathy or humanity they had.

I guess that's a truth Lessing observed there but I couldn't relate to it. The portrayal of sex was interesting it was ever present but like a rash or rot or something not a grand passion, not even between Kenneth and Julia. The way sex overflows traditional heterosexual monoamorous boundaries was portrayed well and very matter of factly (albeit with a hint of tragedy each time). There was little or no love that queered gender apart from the women having boyish figures I suppose. Sex is the open secret, everyone knows but it's breaking the rules to draw attention to it or be too brazen, there is a hypocrisy at the heart of heterosexual marriage in the book (and probably elsewhere).

Technically the book was well written but the racism was depressing, the men were insufferable and the stories were a hard slog for me. I have heard many authors argue their right to write unlikeable characters- very well but this reader desires to assert their right not to read them!

[SpentCello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lessing's strength is always in the psychological integrity of her characters and their relationships and this collection of short stories shows this off excellently. The publisher was obviously trying to go for the 'Africa issue' angle and emphasises that on the front and back covers, which I think is a gross oversimplification of what Lessing's work is really about - so I can see that if you read this for that reason, you would probably be rather disappointed. I found some of the stories a bit repetitive, but overall Lessing's biting critique of power relations - in a colonial context of course, but also in marriage and relationships in general - was engaging and raised deeper philosophical questions.

[Judith Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories about white British middle class farmers in southern Africa just after WW2, who mostly look down on their Dutch, more working class, neighbours / colleagues and patronise their African workers horribly. Sadly this is probably exactly what Lessing saw when she lived in Africa.

Some of the stories deal with the isolation felt by the Europeans, particularly by the wives, who have no work to do, and how they cope (or don't) with it and the effects of living in such a restricted community.

It's a portrait of a vanished world that wasn't a very nice one.

[Mohammed Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

قصص قصيره
القصص مش كامله بتفكرني بمسلسل the wire
الاحداث شيقة جدا حبيتها جدا بس نهاية القصص فعلا مخيبه للامال
كتاب جميل جدا بستثناء اخر قصة الي قلبت مدعكه

[Myriam-Fernanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mid, aged poorly; but, interesting and dark. The shorts don't necessarily connect but draw on themes of power struggle, poverty, and caste systems in Africa.

[Liza]

Winter in July by Doris Lessing (1966)

[Amyem]

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1...

[Adele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories. Cool cold insight in a hot climate.

[Taha Noman ( طه نعمان ) · Rating 3 out of 5]

مجموعة قصص قصيرة للكاتبة الإنجليزية دوريس ليسيننج التي عاشت جزء من حياتها في جنوب أفريقيا أبان فترة التمييز العنصري ، وتتحدث في قصصها عن العزلة التي يعيشها العنصر الأبيض في جنوب أفريقيا وعن التمييز العنصري وإن كانت لم تتعرض للكثير من سوء المعاملة التي كان يتعرض لها السكان الأصليين ، لكن القصص جميلة ولولا الطباعة السيئة والترجمة ربما لكانت قرأتها أجمل