Set in apartheid South Africa, Agaat portrays the unique relationship between Milla, a 67-year-old white woman, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat. Through flashbacks and diary entries, the reader learns about Milla's past. Life for white farmers in 1950s South Africa was full of promise — young and newly married, Milla raised a son and created her own farm out of a swathe of Cape mountainside. Forty years later her family...

"There is passion here, a piercing accuracy, a rare sensitivity and power. . . . One can only marvel." — New York Times

Set in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.

Mary Turner

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"This incendiary debut of linked stories narrates the everyday lives of Soweto residents, from the early years of apartheid to its dissolution and beyond"--

Jest to nie tylko książka o świecie realnym i świecie duchów, nie tylko o sacrum i profanum, ale przede wszystkim o głębokich prawdach życiowych, opisanych mądrze i poetycko... Opowieść Bena Orkiego jest cudowną alegorią osadzoną w Afryce, opowieścią o miłości, śmierci i przemijaniu...