Doris Lessing 
Summer Before the Dark 

The story of a middle-aged woman s search for freedom, from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her four children have flown, her husband is otherwise occupied, and after twenty years of being a good wife and mother, Kate Brown is free for a summer of adventure. She plunges into an affair with a younger man, travelling abroad with him, and, on her return to England, meets an extraordinary young woman whose charm and freedom of spirit encourages Kate in her own liberation. Kate s new life has brought her a strange unhappiness, but as the summer months unfold, a darker, disquieting journey begins, devastating in its consequences. A novel of self-discovery that bears the hallmarks of Lessing s brilliance, honesty and power to move the reader, The Summer Before the Dark has been hailed by some as Lessing s best book.