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Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

A Psychological Thriller

By Doris Lessing

By Doris Lessing

By Doris Lessing

By Doris Lessing

By Doris Lessing

By Doris Lessing

Best Seller

Part of Vintage International

Part of Vintage International

Part of Vintage International

Paperback $16.95

Jul 14, 2009 | ISBN 9780307390615

Mass Market Paperback $13.95

Apr 12, 1981 | ISBN 9781400077267 *This format is not eligible to earn points towards the Reader Rewards program

Ebook $8.99

Nov 17, 2010 | ISBN 9780307777638

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    Briefing for a Descent Into Hell by Doris Lessing
    Paperback $16.95
    Jul 14, 2009 | ISBN 9780307390615

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    • Paperback $16.95
      $16.95

      Jul 14, 2009 | ISBN 9780307390615

      Also available from:

    • Mass Market Paperback $13.95
      $13.95

      Apr 12, 1981 | ISBN 9781400077267

      Also available from:

      *This format is not eligible to earn points towards the Reader Rewards program

    Ebook
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    • Ebook $8.99

      Nov 17, 2010 | ISBN 9780307777638

      Available from:

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    About Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

    In this ambitious novel of madness and release, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Doris Lessing imagines the fantastical "inner-space" life of an amnesiac.

    Charles Watkins, a Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, has suffered a breakdown, confined to a mental hospital as his friends and doctors attempt to bring him back to reality. But Watkins has embarked on a tremendous pyschological adventure that takes him from a spinning raft in the Atlantic to a ruined stone city on a tropical island to an outer-space journey through singing planets. As he travels in his mind through memory and the farther reaches of imagination, his doctors try to subdue him with ever more powerful drugs in a competition for his soul. In this provocative novel, Lessing takes us on a harrowing voyage into the rarely glimpsed territory of the inner mind.

    About Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

    A fascinating look inside the mind of a man who is supposedly “mad.” Professor Charles Watkins of Cambridge University is a patient at a mental hospital where the doctors try with increasing drugs to bring his mind under control. But Watkins has embarked on a tremendous psychological adventure where, after spinning endlessly on a raft in the Atlantic, he lands on a tropical island inhabited by strange creatures with strange customs. Later, he is carried off on a cosmic journey into space…

    About Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

    A fascinating look inside the mind of a man who is supposedly "mad."

    Read An Excerpt

    About Doris Lessing

    Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the… More about Doris Lessing

    About Doris Lessing

    Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the… More about Doris Lessing

    About Doris Lessing

    Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia, in 1919, and moved with her family to southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the… More about Doris Lessing

    Product Details

    Category: Suspense & Thriller | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $16.95
    Published by Vintage
    Jul 14, 2009 | 320 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780307390615

    Category: Suspense & Thriller | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Literary Fiction

    Mass Market Paperback | $13.95
    Published by Vintage
    Apr 12, 1981 | 288 Pages | 4-3/16 x 6-7/8 | ISBN 9781400077267

    Category: Suspense & Thriller | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $8.99
    Published by Vintage
    Nov 17, 2010 | 288 Pages | ISBN 9780307777638

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    Praise

    "Touching and beautiful."
    —The New York Review of Books

    "A brilliant and untamed image of the possibilities that may still constitute man’s destiny."
    —Time

    "An excursion into private consciousness . . . ending up in the darkest reaches of the unconscious at its most primitive."
    —The Washington Post Book World

    Awards

    Nobel Prize WINNER 2007

    Man Booker Prize FINALIST 1970

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