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Loading... Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog: A Novel (2005)by Doris Lessing
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2961084.html The setting is a post-apocalyptic world where Europe is covered by melting ice sheets, the Mediterranean has dried up but slowly starting to fill again, and the remnants of humanity are trying to hold onto and maybe rebuild civilisation. Dann is thrust into a leadership role despite his bad health, and, surrounded by his companions of the title, is drawn into a quest to save a library of knowledge from the old days. The prose is terse, but the setting and the characters conveyed effectively, Dann's personal drama very closely linked to the question of what will happen to the cultural heritage now under threat from the changing climate. It's also fairly short. The frequent description “future fable” just exactly describes this wonderful novel, a richly detailed tapestry of lives and themes and meditations on the world as it might well become. The tale of the young man Dann, who had experienced and accomplished so much in a preceding novel, is both deeply sympathetic and sad, and this reader, any reader in fact, does not need to have read the prequel to make connections with his character. The story is set some millennia on from now, at a time when a thaw is beginning in the new Ice Age that has seen the glaciers and ice sheets reach the southern shores of Europe and lower the sea levels in the Mediterranean. Dann and his contemporaries inhabit the northern fringes of Africa (somewhere around present-day Tunisia perhaps) where rumours of war are commonplace and refugees are frequent. There are recognisable descendants of Africans, Asians and Europeans peopling this world but the action is mostly set in the ruins of ‘the Centre’, where museum exhibits and sealed-in books provide a barely translucent window on a past rapidly disappearing from view and receding from human understanding. The language of The Story of General Dann is simply couched but never simplistic. The novel is suffused with the theme of narrative, from Dann’s brief occupation as a story-teller to Griot’s attempt to make real the storyline in his own head: the rise of a leader who will inspire an army, recover lost knowledge and found a new civilisation; and others have already pointed out the obvious, that the name Griot is a West African term for a story-teller. Dann himself is suffering from a bipolar disorder exacerbated by the fallout from forced opium use in his earlier life. The theme of polarities is echoed in many other ways, not least in the use of differently coloured cloaks by different armies, red by one, black by another. Dann is hero-worshipped by Griot, a former boy-soldier, who hopes that Dann will provide a focus for order, direction, conquest and the preservation of knowledge – all the elements in fact that may allow a dimly-perceived civilisation to be resurrected in the marshy foothills of the Atlas mountains. All are groping in the dark, and while there is a resolution of sorts in the closing pages of the novel, it is clear that civilisation will have to emerge anew rather than from the ruins of its former manifestation. The final point I want to make concerns Lessing’s portrayal of the female characters in the book. It is in these individuals – Dann’s deluded and drug-addicted former partner, his bullying daughter, his niece (the daughter of his sister Mara), the natural healer – that the author’s fable-telling is most manifest. Yes, these are individuals, but they are also almost stereotypes, and while we feel for them – their strengths, their foibles, their victimhoods, their successes – they appear, as with the male characters, somewhat distant. This is not just because they are in some never-never land in the far future; it is because, I think, these characters could be each and every one of us if we found ourselves in such a situation. And if it makes us pause and think, ‘Would we manage any better in such circumstances?’ then that is only one of many positive aspects of this thoughtful and haunting novel. The Story of General Dann reminds me of Ursula Le Guin’s speculative novels: there is the same melancholy, the avoidance of trite formulae, the consideration of the individual’s relationship to society. Though this is my first Lessing story, its predecessor Mara and Dann: an adventure is already tempting me from the bookshelves. http://wp.me/p2oNj1-qO This is the second book in a very interesting series about a brother and sister in a post-apocalyptic world, thousands of years after global warming has caused Africa to be the only inhabitable continent. This book begins with Dann and Mara choosing a place to settle down, and concentrates upon their relationships and struggle to build a better future with (and for) their friends and family. As with the previous book, the characters are complex and interesting. This book was slower paced, and less cohesive than the first book in the series, but still engrossing and a good continuation of the first book. no reviews | add a review
A fascinating novel of love and ecology from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Doris Lessing returns to the world of visionary fiction, first visited in her Canopus in Argos quintet of novels in the 1980s, and in 'Mara and Dann', to which this is a sequel, in 1999. The Earth's climate has changed - it is colder than ever before - and Dann, four in the first book, is now grown up and a general, and the man to whom everyone looks for guidance and leadership. Lessing's novel charts his adventures across the frozen wastes of the north, a journey that will eventually lead to the discovery of a secret library. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Lessing knows how to tell a good tale, and the ending makes it clear that General Dann, Captain Griot, Ali the doctor and tutor of Tamar, Dann's niece, will be back. ( )