A study of a man beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown, this is a brilliant an
d disturbing novel by Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. P
enniless, rambling and incoherent, a man is found wandering at night on London's
Embankment. Taken to hospital and heavily sedated, he tells the doctors of his
incredible fantastical voyage, adrift on the ocean, landing on unknown shores, f
lying on the back of a huge white bird.
Identified as Charles Watkins, a Camb
ridge Classics professor, he is visited by family and friends, each revealing cl
ues to the nature of his breakdown. As the doctors try to cure him, Watkins begi
ns a fierce battle to hold on to his magnificent inner world, as it gradually ac
quires a greater reality than the everyday...'Briefing for a Descent into Hell'
is one of Doris Lessing's most brilliantly achieved novels, linking her early wo
rk, which explored the nature of subjectivity, with her later experiments in sci
ence fiction. Its indictment of the tyranny of society is powerful, disturbing a
nd, as always, magnificently rendered.
