The Sirian Experiments
Synopsis
The Sirian Experiments chronicles the origins of our planet, as the three galactic empires fight for control of the human race. The novel charts the gradual moral awakening of its narrator, Ambien II, a "dry, dutiful, efficient" female Sirian administrator. Witnessing the wanton colonisation of land and people, Ambien begins to question her involvement in such insidious experimentation, her faith in the possibility of human progress itself growing weaker every day.
Author Biography
English short story writer and novelist Doris Lessing was born in October 1919 in Persia (now Iran). She took a number of non-literary jobs after leaving school when she was fifteen. When her second marriage ended in 1949, she moved to London, where her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times; Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971); The Sirian Experiments (1981); and The Good Terrorist (1985) which was also awarded the WH Smith Literary Award. She has also been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2005 and 2007). Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.
