Alfred & Emily. Doris Lessing. 2008.

In Alfred & Emily Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, both of them irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half she imagines the happier lives they might have made for themselves had there been no war, a story that begins with them meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of that war, the family’s move to Africa, and the impact of her parents’ marriage on a young woman growing up in a strange land.