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118-643: The Good Terrorist is a 1985 political novel written by the British novelist Doris Lessing . The book's protagonist is the naïve drifter Alice, who squats with a group of radicals in London and is drawn into their terrorist activities. Lessing was spurred to write The Good Terrorist by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of the Harrods department store in London in 1983. She had been

236-480: A squat of like-minded "comrades" in a derelict house in London. Other members of the squat include Bert, its ineffective leader, and a lesbian couple, the maternal Roberta and her unstable and fragile partner Faye. The abandoned house is in a state of disrepair and earmarked by the City Council for demolition. In the face of the indifference of her comrades, Alice takes it upon herself to clean up and renovate

354-598: A totalitarian or authoritarian state. The poet Jan Kochanowski 's play The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys (1578), the first tragedy written in the Polish language , recounts an incident leading up to the Trojan War . Its theme of the responsibilities of statesmanship resonates to the present day. The book Utopia (1516), written by Sir Thomas More , talk about a story of a different world compared to

472-609: A "satire of the blackest and most hilarious kind", in his opinion Lessing "has no sense of humor, and instead of lashing [the characters] with the satirist's whip, she treats them with unremitting and belittling irony". Virginia Scott called the novel a fantasy. Drawing on Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in The International Fiction Review , she wrote that "[Lessing's] Alice with her group of political revolutionaries can be seen as

590-419: A Senegalese immigrant living France since the 1990s, writes political fiction about her experiences on France's unwelcoming borders that are dominated by white Christian culture. The work of Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé also tackles colonialism and oppression; her best known titles are Ségou (1984) and Ségou II (1985). Set in historical Segou (now part of Mali), the novels examine the violent legacies of

708-457: A book with a political statement. It's ... about a certain kind of political person, a kind of self-styled revolutionary that can only be produced by affluent societies. There's a great deal of playacting that I don't think you'd find in extreme left revolutionaries in societies where they have an immediate challenge. Lessing said she was inspired to write The Good Terrorist by the IRA bombing of

826-520: A car bomb. Alice does not fully support this action, but accepts the majority decision. They target an upmarket hotel in Knightsbridge , but their inexperience results in the premature detonation of the bomb, which kills Faye and several passers-by. The remaining comrades, shaken by what they have done, decide to leave the squat and split up. Alice, disillusioned by Jasper, chooses not to follow him and remains behind because she cannot bear to abandon

944-515: A century before he completed Pharaoh . This is a political awareness that Prus shared with his 10-years-junior novelist compatriot, Joseph Conrad , who was an admirer of Prus' writings. Pharaoh has been translated into 23 languages and adapted as a 1966 Polish feature film . It is also known to have been Joseph Stalin's favourite book. Joseph Conrad wrote several novels with political themes: Nostromo (1904) , The Secret Agent (1907), and Under Western Eyes (1911). Nostromo (1904)

1062-513: A different protagonist: Roy Sherwood, a member of the state legislature; Neil Christiansen, the state's junior senator; and Jay McGown, the governor's speech-writer. The governor himself, Arthur Fenstemaker, a master politician (said to have been based on Brammer's mentor Lyndon Johnson ) serves as the dominant figure throughout. The book also includes characters based on Brammer, his wife Nadine, Johnson's wife Ladybird , and his brother Sam Houston Johnson . The book has been widely acclaimed one of

1180-599: A fully independent Rhodesia , which immediately became an unrecognised state . In 1979, it reconstituted itself under majority rule as Zimbabwe Rhodesia , which also failed to win international recognition. After a period of interim British control following the Lancaster House Agreement in December 1979, the country achieved internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe in April 1980. Initially,

1298-641: A member of the British Communist Party in the early 1950s, and was an active campaigner against the use of nuclear weapons . By 1964, Lessing had published six novels, but grew disillusioned with Communism following the 1956 Hungarian uprising and, after reading The Sufis by Idries Shah , turned her attention to Sufism , an Islamic belief system. This prompted her to write her five-volume "space fiction" series, Canopus in Argos: Archives , which drew on Sufi concepts. The series

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1416-532: A member of the British Communist Party , but left after the 1956 Hungarian uprising . Some reviewers labelled the novel a satire , while Lessing called it humorous. The title is an oxymoron which highlights Alice's ambivalent nature. The Good Terrorist divided reviewers. Some praised its insight and characterisation, others faulted its style and the characters' lack of depth. One critic complimented Lessing's "strong descriptive prose and her precise and realistic characterisations", another her "brilliant account of

1534-573: A moment's bother." She described Alice as "quietly comic[al]" because she is so full of contradictions. She said she was surprised how some of the characters (other than Jasper, Alice's love interest) developed, such as the pill-popping and fragile Faye, who turned out to be a "destroyed person". The Good Terrorist has been labelled a "political novel" by the publishers and some reviewers, including Alison Lurie in The New York Review of Books . Lurie stated that as political fiction , it

1652-400: A political dimension, is the social novel – also known as the "social-problem" or "social-protest" novel – a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". More specific examples of social problems that are addressed in such works include poverty, conditions in factories and mines,

1770-563: A political point. Steinbeck had visited the camps well before publication of the novel and argued that their inhumane nature destroyed the settlers' spirit. The Quiet American (1955) by English novelist Graham Greene questions the foundations of growing American involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s. The novel has received much attention due to its prediction of the outcome of the Vietnam War and subsequent American foreign policy since

1888-537: A response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between Russia 's liberals of the 1830s and 1840s, and the growing Russian nihilist movement among their sons. Both the nihilists and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the Slavophiles , who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality . Turgenev's novel

2006-735: A serious fantasy which has striking parallels to ... Carroll's Alice ". Both Alices enter a house and are confronted by seemingly impossible challenges: Carroll's Alice has to navigate passages too small to fit through, while Lessing's Alice finds herself in a barely inhabitable house that is earmarked for demolition. Both Alices are able to change their appearances: in Wonderland , Alice adjusts her size to suit her needs; in The Good Terrorist , Alice changes her demeanour to get what she wants from others. Scott noted that at one point in The Good Terrorist , Faye refers to Alice as "Alice

2124-486: A white population of over 100,000, as well as additional British military and civil units and their dependents, most of these were relatively new to the region, were primarily in the extraction business, had little landed interests, and were more amenable to allowing black nationalism than the Southern Rhodesians. Accordingly, Britain granted independence to Northern Rhodesia on 24 October 1964. However, when

2242-413: Is Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949), many of whose terms and concepts, such as Big Brother , doublethink , thoughtcrime , Newspeak , Room 101 , telescreen , 2 + 2 = 5 , and memory hole , have entered into common use. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective " Orwellian ", which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of recorded history by

2360-583: Is "one of the best novels ... about the terrorist mentality" since Joseph Conrad 's The Secret Agent (1907), although this was questioned by William H. Pritchard in The Hudson Review , who wrote that compared to Conrad, The Good Terrorist is "shapeless". Several commentators have called it more a novel about politics than political fiction. In From the Margins of Empire: Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer , Louise Yelin called

2478-553: Is "self-deluding" and not always likeable, the novel's strength are the characters and its depiction of political motivation. Donoghue wrote in The New York Times that he did not care much about what happened to Alice and her comrades. He felt that Lessing presents Alice as "an unquestioned rigmarole of reactions and prejudices", which leaves no room for any further interest. Donoghue complained that Lessing has not made up her mind on whether her characters are "the salt of

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2596-580: Is also notable for the persecution he underwent. Aristophanes' plays turned upon images of filth and disease. His bawdy style was adopted by Greek dramatist-comedian Menander , whose early play, Drunkenness , contains an attack on the politician, Callimedon . Jonathan Swift 's A Modest Proposal (1729) is an 18th-century Juvenalian satirical essay in which he suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. The satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards

2714-400: Is concerned with justice ( δικαιοσύνη ), the order and character of the just city-state , and the just man. Other influential politically themed works include Thomas More 's Utopia (1516), Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Voltaire 's Candide (1759), and Harriet Beecher Stowe 's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Political fiction frequently employs satire , often in

2832-408: Is created especially by communist , socialist , and anarchist authors. It is about the lives of the poor, and the period from 1930 to 1945, in particular, produced many such novels. However, proletarian works were also produced before and after those dates. In Britain, the terms " working-class " literature, novel, etc., are more generally used. A closely related type of novel, which frequently has

2950-455: Is depicted here as a compulsion to protect the weak, despite their propensity to retaliate and hurt you. Feminist themes and the subjugation of women have also been associated with The Good Terrorist . Scanlan indicated that while many of the comrades in the book are women, they find that political activity does not elevate their position, and that they are "trapped in the patriarchy they despise". Yelin suggested that although Lessing ridicules

3068-473: Is paramount in The Secret Agent , as the main character, Verloc, works for a quasi-political organisation. The plot to destroy Greenwich Observatory is in itself anarchistic. Vladimir asserts that the bombing "must be purely destructive" and that the anarchists who will be implicated as the architects of the explosion "should make it clear that [they] are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of

3186-401: Is set amid political upheaval in the fictitious South American country of Costaguana, where a trusted Italian-descended longshoreman, Giovanni Battista Fidanza—the novel's eponymous "Nostromo" (Italian for "our man")—is instructed by English-descended silver-mine owner Charles Gould to take Gould's silver abroad so that it will not fall into the hands of revolutionaries. The role of politics

3304-461: Is set in a small Midlands industrial town and particularly criticizes the effect of Utilitarianism on the lives of cities' working classes. John Ruskin declared Hard Times his favourite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions. Walter Allen characterised Hard Times as an unsurpassed "critique of industrial society", Other notable examples are in the main lists, above. Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia

3422-511: Is still dependent on her parents. Yelin said Alice is "in a state of perpetual adolescence", and her need to "mother everyone" is "an extreme case of psychological regression or failure to thrive". Greene wrote that Alice's "humanitarianism is ludicrous in her world", and described her as "so furiously at odds with herself" because she is too immature to comprehend what is happening and her actions vary from being helpful to dangerous. Boschman called Lessing's narrative " ironic " because it highlights

3540-502: Is the "good terrorist", but that while she may be a good person, she is "rotten at being a terrorist". Writing in World Literature Today , Mona Knapp concluded that Lessing's heroine, the "good terrorist", is neither a good person, nor a good revolutionary. She knows how to renovate houses and manipulate people to her advantage, but she is unemployed and steals money from her parents. When real revolutionaries start using

3658-457: Is the symbolic nature of the house. Margaret Scanlan stated that as in books like Mansfield Park and Jane Eyre , The Good Terrorist "defines a woman in terms of her house". Writing in the journal Studies in the Novel , Katherine Fishburn said that Lessing often uses a house to symbolise "psychological or ontological change", and that here, "the house ... symbolizes Alice's function in

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3776-408: Is trailed by Jasper, a graduate she took in at a student commune she lived in fifteen years previously, who sponges off her. Alice fell in love with him, only to become frustrated by his aloofness and burgeoning homosexuality. She considers herself a revolutionary, fighting against "fascist imperialism", but is still dependent on her parents, whom she treats with contempt. In the early 1980s, Alice joins

3894-501: Is won by the proponent of reforms. An early example of the political novel is The Betrothed (1827) by Alessandro Manzoni , an Italian historical novel . Set in northern Italy in 1628, during the oppressive years of direct Spanish rule, it has been seen sometimes as a veiled attack on the Austrian Empire , which controlled Italy at the time the novel was written. It has been called the most famous and widely read novel in

4012-720: The East and North African campaigns , Italy , Madagascar and Burma . Southern Rhodesian forces had the highest loss ratio of any constituent element, colony, dependency or dominion of the British Empire forces during World War II. Additionally, the Rhodesian pilots earned the highest number of decorations and ace appellations of any group within the Empire. This resulted in the Royal Family paying an unusual state visit to

4130-607: The Moffat Treaty , which was signed by King Lobengula of the Ndebele people . "Southern" was first used in 1898 and dropped from normal usage in 1964, on the break-up of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland . " Rhodesia " then remained the name of the country until the creation of Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979. Legally, from the British perspective, the name Southern Rhodesia continued to be used until 18 April 1980, when

4248-736: The Republic of Zimbabwe was promulgated. The British government agreed that Rhodes' company, the British South Africa Company (BSAC), would administer the territory stretching from the Limpopo to Lake Tanganyika under charter as a protectorate . Queen Victoria signed the charter in 1889. Rhodes used this document in 1890 to justify sending the Pioneer Column , a group of white settlers protected by well-armed British South Africa Police (BSAP) and guided by

4366-562: The Spanish Civil War . The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship , built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror . Orwell described his Animal Farm as "a satirical tale against Stalin", and in his essay " Why I Write " (1946) he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole." Orwell's most famous work, however,

4484-538: The Swedish Academy on the occasion of her being awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature called it "a satirical picture of the need of the contemporary left for total control and the female protagonist's misdirected martyrdom and subjugation". Yelin said the novel "oscillat[ed] between satire and nostalgia". Academic Robert E. Kuehn felt that it is not satire at all and that while the book could have been

4602-698: The Transvaal Republic (for two brief periods known as the British Transvaal Colony ; from 1910, the Union of South Africa and, from 1961, the Republic of South Africa ). This southern region, known for its extensive gold reserves, was first purchased by the BSAC's Pioneer Column on the strength of a Mineral Concession extracted from its Matabele king, Lobengula , and various majority Mashona vassal chiefs in 1890. Though parts of

4720-675: The Transvaal Republic , the Ndebele were led by their spiritual leader Mlimo against the white colonials and thus began the Second Matabele War (1896–97) which resulted in the extermination of nearly half the British settlers. After months of bloodshed, Mlimo was found and shot by the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham and soon thereafter Rhodes walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo Hills and persuaded

4838-557: The Union of South Africa , but, by forcing the pace of negotiation, the Southern Rhodesians obtained unfavourable terms and the electorate backed Responsible Government in a 1922 referendum . In view of the outcome of the referendum, the territory was annexed by the United Kingdom on 12 September 1923. Shortly after annexation, on 1 October 1923, the first constitution for the new Colony of Southern Rhodesia came into force. Under this constitution Sir Charles Coghlan became

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4956-423: The impi to lay down their arms, effectively ending the revolt. A legislative council was created in 1899 to manage the company's civil affairs, with a minority of elected seats, through which the BSAC had to pass government measures. As the company was a British institution in which settlers and capitalists owned most shares, and local black African tribal chiefs the remainder, and the electorate to this council

5074-579: The revolutions of 1917 . Conrad's earlier novella, Heart of Darkness (1899), also had political implications, in its depiction of European colonial depredations in Africa , which Conrad witnessed during his employ in the Belgian Congo . John Steinbeck 's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a depiction of the plight of the poor. However, some Steinbeck's contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack writes: "Steinbeck

5192-455: The utopian and dystopian genres. This includes totalitarian dystopias of the early 20th century such as Jack London 's The Iron Heel , Sinclair Lewis ' It Can't Happen Here , and George Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four . The Greek playwright Aristophanes ' plays are known for their political and social satire, particularly in his criticism of the powerful Athenian general, Cleon , in plays such as The Knights . Aristophanes

5310-450: The "misogyny pervasive in patriarchal constructions of (male) heterosexuality". Several critics have called The Good Terrorist ' s title an oxymoron . Robert Boschman suggested it is indicative of Alice's "contradictory personality" – she renovates the squat's house, yet is focused on destroying society. In The Hudson Review , George Kearns wrote that the title "hovers above the novel with ... irony". The reader assumes that Alice

5428-630: The 1950s. Graham Greene portrays a U.S. official named Pyle as so blinded by American exceptionalism that he cannot see the calamities he brings upon the Vietnamese. The book uses Greene's experiences as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro in French Indochina in 1951–54. The Gay Place (1961) is a set of politically themed novellas with interlocking plots and characters by American author Billy Lee Brammer . Set in an unnamed state identical to Texas, each novella has

5546-597: The British Government did not wish to see them fall into the hands of the nationalist leaders, and since Southern Rhodesia had borne the major expenses of running the Federation. With regard to the latter, however, Northern Rhodesia was the wealthiest of the three member states (due to its vast copper mines) and had contributed more to the overall building of infrastructure than the other two members did. Southern Rhodesia, recognising an inevitable dissolution of

5664-483: The British South Africa Company and its sub-concessionaires who were mostly British subjects. In 1953, it was merged into the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland , which lasted until 1963. Southern Rhodesia was renamed Rhodesia and remained a de jure British colony until 1980. However, the Rhodesian government issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 and established

5782-415: The Federation created the paradoxical situation of having a white elite owning most of the land and capital, whilst being completely dependent upon cheap black labour. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was dissolved on 1 January 1964. However, it was expected that only Nyasaland would be let go, whilst the remainder of Rhodesia both north and south would be united. Although Northern Rhodesia had

5900-731: The Federation, was quick to use federal funds in building its infrastructure ahead of the others. A key component of this was the building of the Kariba Dam and its hydroelectric facility (shafts, control centre, etc.), which was situated on the Southern Rhodesian side of the Zambezi Gorge. This situation caused some embarrassment for the Zambian government later when it was a "front line state" in support of insurgents into Rhodesia in that its major source of electric power

6018-576: The Harrods department store in London in 1983. She recalled, "the media reported it to sound as if it was the work of amateurs. I started to think, what kind of amateurs could they be?" and realised "how easy it would be for a kid, not really knowing what he or she was doing, to drift into a terrorist group." Lessing already had Alice in mind as the central character: "I know several people like Alice—this mixture of ... maternal caring, ... and who can contemplate killing large numbers of people without

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6136-542: The Italian language. In the 1840s British politician Benjamin Disraeli wrote a trilogy of novels with political themes. With Coningsby; or, The New Generation (1844), Disraeli, in historian Robert Blake 's view, "infused the novel genre with political sensibility, espousing the belief that England's future as a world power depended not on the complacent old guard, but on youthful, idealistic politicians." Coningsby

6254-553: The Modern World . Rubenstein wrote that when "ambitious idealists" have no "creative ruling class to follow or a rebellious lower class to lead [they] have often taken upon themselves the burden of representative action", which he said "is a formula for disaster". Critical opinion is divided on The Good Terrorist . Elizabeth Lowry highlighted this in the London Review of Books : "[Lessing] has been sharply criticised for

6372-655: The Southern Rhodesian government announced that when Northern Rhodesia achieved independence as Zambia, the Southern Rhodesian government would officially become known as the Rhodesian Government and the colony would become known as Rhodesia. On 23 October of that year, the Minister of Internal Affairs notified the press that the Constitution would be amended to make this official. The Legislative Assembly then passed an Interpretation Bill to declare that

6490-578: The United Kingdom created the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (or the Central African Federation , CAF), which consisted of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Zimbabwe , Zambia , and Malawi , respectively). The idea was to try to steer a middle road between the differing aspirations of the black nationalists, the colonial administration and the white settler population. The CAF sought to emulate

6608-680: The United Kingdom, and it was therefore outside the powers of Southern Rhodesian institutions to amend them unilaterally. Notwithstanding the Governor's lack of assent to the Interpretation Bill the United Kingdom's Colonial Office was, by 1965, officially using the name "Rhodesia" in British Government-issued Gazettes of the period (for instance see: The 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours of 12 June 1965). The Rhodesian government, which had begun using

6726-553: The Wonder, the wondrous Alice", alluding to Carroll's Alice. The American novelist Judith Freeman wrote that one of the common themes in The Good Terrorist is that of keeping one's identity in a collective , of preserving "individual conscience". This theme suggests that problems occur when we are coerced into conforming. Freeman said that Alice is a "quintessential good woman ... the little Hausefrau [sic] revolutionary", who turns bad under peer pressure. Another theme present

6844-416: The administration of the two northern territories as Northern Rhodesia in 1911. As a result of the various treaties between the BSAC and the black tribes, Acts of Parliament delineating BSAC and Crown Lands, overlapping British colonial commission authority of both areas, the rights of the increasing number of British settlers and their descendants were given secondary review by authorities. This resulted in

6962-694: The ascendant commercial empires in Thomas More's Europe. The political comedy The Return of the Deputy (1790), by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz —Polish poet, playwright, statesman, and comrade-in-arms of Tadeusz Kościuszko —was written in about two weeks' time while Niemcewicz was serving as a deputy to the historic Four-Year Sejm of 1788–92. The comedy's premiere in January 1791 was an enormous success, sparking widespread debate, royal communiques, and diplomatic correspondence. As Niemcewicz had hoped, it set

7080-736: The best American political novels ever written. Since 2000, there has been a surge of Transatlantic migrant literature in French, Spanish, and English, with new narratives about political topics relating to global debt, labor abuses, mass migration, and environmental crises in the Global South. Political fiction by contemporary novelists from the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America directly challenges political leadership, systemic racism, and economical systems.   Fatou Diome ,

7198-600: The big game hunter Frederick Selous , through Matabeleland and into Shona territory to establish Fort Salisbury (now Harare ). In 1893–1894, with the help of their new Maxim guns , the BSAP defeated the Ndebele in the First Matabele War , a war which also resulted in the death of King Lobengula and the death of most of the members of the Shangani Patrol . Shortly after the disastrous BSAP Jameson Raid into

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7316-665: The book a "graceful and accomplished story", and a "brilliant account of the types of individuals who commit terrorist acts". Writing in the Los Angeles Times , Freeman described Lessing as "one of our most valuable writers" who "has an uncanny grasp of human relationships". In a review in the Sun-Sentinel , Bonnie Gross wrote that it was Lessing's "most accessible" book to date, and that her "strong descriptive prose and her precise and realistic characterizations" made it "remarkable" and "rewarding reading". Gross considered

7434-721: The book's depiction of Alice, who "speak[s] to me most disquietingly about myself and my generation". In a review in Off Our Backs , an American feminist publication, Vickie Leonard called The Good Terrorist a "fascinating book" that is "extremely well written" with characters that are "exciting" and "realistic". Leonard added that even though Alice is not a feminist, the book illustrates the author's "strong admiration for women and their accomplishments". Writing in The Guardian , Rogers described The Good Terrorist as "a novel in unsparing close-up" that examines society through

7552-421: The colony at the end of the war to thank the Rhodesian people. Economically, Southern Rhodesia developed an economy that was narrowly based on production of a few primary products, notably, chrome and tobacco. It was therefore vulnerable to the economic cycle. The deep recession of the 1930s gave way to a post-war boom. This boom prompted the immigration of about 200,000 white settlers between 1945 and 1970, taking

7670-780: The colony could be referred to as Rhodesia. The Bill received its third reading on 9 December 1964, and passed to the Governor for royal assent . However, no royal assent was granted to the Bill. Section 3 of the Southern Rhodesia (Annexation) Order 1923 provided that Southern Rhodesia "shall be known as the Colony of Southern Rhodesia" and the Southern Rhodesia (Constitution) Act 1961 and the Order-in-Council which followed it both referred to it as such. The country's name had been agreed previously by both Southern Rhodesia and

7788-746: The colony's formal name in United Kingdom constitutional theory: for example, the Act passed by the United Kingdom Parliament declaring the independence a legal nullity was entitled the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 . Following the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement , the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Southern Rhodesia Constitution (Interim Provisions) Order 1979, establishing

7906-455: The cycle of daughters fighting their mothers permeates each generation. The British novelist Jane Rogers said that The Good Terrorist "is as unsparing and incisive about motherhood as it is about the extreme left", and that motherhood here "is terrible": Alice's mother is reduced to despair continually yielding to her selfish daughter's demands; Alice mothers Jasper, and has a similar despairing relationship with him. Rogers added that motherhood

8024-453: The denial and self-deception". The fact that Jasper has turned to homosexuality, which Alice dismisses as "his emotional life", "suits her own repressed desires". Kuehn called Alice's obsession with the "hapless" and "repellent" Jasper "just comprehensible", adding that she feels safe with his gayness, even though she has to endure his abuse. Knapp stated that while Lessing exposes self-styled insurrectionists as "spoiled and immature products of

8142-573: The divide between who Alice is and who she thinks she is, and her efforts to pretend there is no discrepancy. Alice refuses to acknowledge that her "maternal activities" stem from her desire to win her mother's approval and, believing that her mother has "betrayed and abandoned" her, turns to Jasper as a way to "continue to sustain her beliefs about herself and the world". Even though Jasper takes advantage of her adoration of him by mistreating her, Alice still clings to him because her self-image "vigorously qualifies her perception of [him], and thus proliferates

8260-441: The earth or its scum". In a review in the Chicago Tribune , Kuehn felt that the work has little impact and is not memorable. He said Lessing's real interest is character development, but complained that the characters are "trivial or two-dimensional or crippled by self-delusions". The Good Terrorist was shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize , and in 1986 won the Mondello Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award . In 2007 Lessing

8378-490: The election. Prior to about 1918, the opinion among the electorate supported continued BSAC rule but opinion changed because of the development of the country and increased settlement. In addition, a decision in the British courts that land not in private ownership belonged to the British Crown rather than the BSAC gave great impetus to the campaign for self-government. In the resulting treaty government self-government, Crown lands which were sold to settlers allowed those settlers

8496-479: The experience of Australia, Canada and South Africa – wherein groups of colonies had been federated together to form viable independent nations. Originally designed to be "an indissoluble federation", the CAF quickly started to unravel due to the low proportion of British and other white citizens in relation to the larger black populations. Additionally, by incorporating the tribes within the Federation as potential citizens,

8614-486: The eyes of individuals. She said it is "witty and ... angry at human stupidity and destructiveness", and within the context of recent terrorist attacks in London, it is an example of "fiction going where factual writing cannot". A critic in Kirkus Reviews wrote that Alice's story is "an extraordinary tour de force—a psychological portrait that's realistic with a vengeance". The reviewer added that although Alice

8732-478: The female characters, particularly Alice, much more developed than the male ones. Amanda Sebestyen wrote in The Women's Review of Books that at first glance the ideas in The Good Terrorist appear deceptively simple, and the plot predictable. But she added that Lessing's strength is her "stoic narrat[ion] of the daily effort of living", which excels in describing day-to-day life in a squat. Sebestyen also praised

8850-552: The first Premier of First Cabinet of Southern Rhodesia and upon his death in 1927 he was succeeded by Howard Unwin Moffat . During World War II , Southern Rhodesian military units participated on the side of the United Kingdom. Southern Rhodesian support for the Allied war effort was based on a mixture shared kinship and identity with Britain and support for democracy. Southern Rhodesian forces were involved on many fronts including

8968-545: The formation of new movements for expanding the self-government of the Rhodesian people which saw BSAC rule as an impediment to further expansion. The Southern Rhodesian Legislative Council election of 1920 returned a large majority of candidates of the Responsible Government Association and it became clear that BSAC rule was no longer practical. Opinion in the United Kingdom and South Africa favoured incorporation of Southern Rhodesia in

9086-416: The house into which she has poured so much effort. Despite her initial reservations about the bombing, Alice feels a need to justify their actions to others, but realises it would be fruitless because "[o]rdinary people simply didn't understand". She acknowledges that she is a terrorist now, though she cannot remember when the change happened. Doris Lessing 's interest in politics began in the 1940s while she

9204-675: The house. To be more useful to the struggle, Jasper and Bert travel to Ireland and the Soviet Union to offer their services to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the KGB , but are turned down. A more organised group of revolutionaries moves in next door and start using Alice's house as a conduit for arms, to which Alice objects. Mysterious strangers visit the squat and question their decision making. The comrades eventually decide to act on their own, calling themselves "Freeborn British Communists". They start experimenting with explosives and build

9322-489: The house. She also persuades the authorities to restore the electricity and water supplies. Alice becomes the house's "mother", cooking for everyone, and dealing with the local police, who are trying to evict them. The members of the squat belong to the Communist Centre Union (CCU), and attend demonstrations and pickets. Alice involves herself in some of these activities, but spends most of her time working on

9440-456: The male members of the CCU and their role playing, she is also critical of the female members "who collude in male-dominant political organizations and thus in their own oppression". But with the book's allusions to Jasper's homosexuality, Yelin added that Lessing's "critique of women's infatuation with patriarchal misogyny and their emotional dependence on misogynist men" is muted by homophobia and

9558-542: The middle class", she also derides their ineptness at affecting any meaningful change. Lessing is critical of the state which "feeds the very hand that terrorizes it", yet she also condemns those institutions that exploits the working class and ignores the homeless. Knapp remarks that Lessing does not resolve these ambiguities, but instead highlights the failings of the state and those seeking to overthrow it. Scanlan compared Lessing's comrades to Richard E. Rubenstein 's terrorists in his book Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in

9676-403: The new name anyway, did not press the issue. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence , adopted on 11 November 1965, was in the name of "Rhodesia", which remained unchanged by the declaration of a republic in 1970, the title of the republican constitution of 1969, like the constitution before it, being "Constitution of Rhodesia". While the new name was widely used, 'Southern Rhodesia' remained

9794-432: The new nationalists changed its name to Zambia and began tentatively at first and later in rapid march an Africanisation campaign, Southern Rhodesia remained a British colony, resisting attempts to bring in majority rule. The colony attempted to change its name to Rhodesia although this was not recognised by the United Kingdom. The majority of the Federation's military and financial assets went to Southern Rhodesia, since

9912-605: The offices of Governor and Deputy Governor of Southern Rhodesia, filled by Lord Soames and Sir Antony Duff respectively. The new Governor arrived in Salisbury on 12 December 1979, and on that day the Parliament of Zimbabwe Rhodesia handed power over to him by passing the Constitution of Zimbabwe Rhodesia (Amendment) (No. 4) Act, declaring that "Zimbabwe Rhodesia shall cease to be an independent State and become part of Her Majesty's dominions". After elections in February 1980,

10030-455: The one they live in. The character Thomas More is sent by King Henry VIII of England to negotiate the English wool trade. There he meets a man by the name Raphael Hythloday. He is a man that has been to the island on Utopia. He explains to More how their entire philosophy is to find happiness and share everything collectively; in this society, money does not exist, which starkly contrasts with

10148-561: The other hand, George Orwell , in his essay on Dickens, wrote: "There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown. For in reality his target is not so much society as 'human nature'." Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it destroyed middle-class polemics about criminals, making any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed impossible. Charles Dickens 's Hard Times (1854)

10266-433: The pedestrian quality of her prose, and as vigorously defended". The Irish literary critic Denis Donoghue complained that the style of the novel is "insistently drab", and Kuehn referred to Lessing's text as "surprisingly bland". Lowry noted that the English academic Clare Hanson defended the book by saying that it is "a grey and textureless novel because it ... speaks a grey and textureless language". Freeman described

10384-438: The plight of child labor, violence against women, rising criminality, and epidemics caused by overcrowding and poor sanitation in cities. Charles Dickens was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". On

10502-539: The poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general. George Orwell 's Animal Farm (1945) is an allegorical and dystopian novella which satirises the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet Union 's Stalinist era . Orwell, a democratic socialist , was a critic of Joseph Stalin and was hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism —an attitude that had been shaped by his experiences during

10620-492: The powers that be are vulnerable to co-option, seduction , subornation, defamation , intimidation, and assassination . Perhaps the chief lesson, belatedly absorbed by Ramses as pharaoh, is the importance, to power, of knowledge . Prus' vision of the fall of an ancient civilization derives some of its power from the author's intimate awareness of the final demise of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795,

10738-424: The privileges of the mostly self-interested noble class ; and of promoting a more active Polish role in international affairs, in the interest of stopping the depredations of Poland's neighbors, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (who will in 1795 complete the dismemberment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ). Romantic interest is provided by a rivalry between a reformer and a conservative for a young lady's hand—which

10856-460: The right to vote in the self-governing colony. The territory north of the Zambezi was the subject of separate treaties with African chiefs: today, it forms the country of Zambia . The first BSAC Administrator for the western part was appointed for Barotseland in 1897 and for the whole of North-Western Rhodesia in 1900. The first BSAC Administrator for the eastern part, North-Eastern Rhodesia ,

10974-582: The situation was untenable, and facing strong international pressure, concluded the Internal Settlement with black nationalist leaders in March 1978. A general election a year later resulted in the creation of a unity government, which in December 1979 concluded the Lancaster House Agreement , whereby Britain resumed control of the country for a brief period before granting independence to the renamed Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980. On 7 October 1964,

11092-637: The slave trade, Islam, Christianity, and colonization (from 1797 to 1860). A bold critic of the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy , French novelist Marie Ndiayes won the Prix Goncourt for " Three Strong Women "(2009) about patriarchal control. The proletarian novel is written by workers, mainly for other workers. It overlaps and sometimes is synonymous with the working-class novel, socialist novel, social-problem novel (also problem novel, sociological novel, or social novel ), propaganda or thesis novel, and socialist-realism novel. The intention of

11210-613: The squat to ship arms, she panics and, going behind her comrades' backs, makes a telephone call to the authorities to warn them. Knapp called Alice "a bad terrorist and a stunted human being". Fishburn suggested that it is Lessing herself who is the "good terrorist", symbolised here by Alice, but that hers is "political terrorism of a literary kind", where she frequently disguises her ideas in "very domestic-looking fiction", and "direct[ly] challenge[s] ... our sense of reality". Kuehn described Alice as "well-intentioned, canny and sometimes lovable", but as someone who, at 36, never grew up, and

11328-576: The stage for passage of Poland's epochal Constitution of 3 May 1791 , which is regarded as Europe's first, and the world's second, modern written national constitution, after the United States Constitution implemented in 1789. The comedy pits proponents against opponents of political reforms: of abolishing the destabilizing free election of Poland's kings; of abolishing the legislatively destructive liberum veto ; of granting greater rights to peasants and townspeople; of curbing

11446-404: The story". Yelin described The Good Terrorist as "an urban, dystopian updating of the house-as-England genre, [where] ... England is represented by a house in London". Several critics have focused on the theme of motherhood. In "Mothers and Daughters/Aging and Dying", Claire Sprague wrote that Lessing often dwells on the theme of mothers passing their behaviours onto their daughters, and how

11564-538: The territory was referred to as "South Zambezia", a reference to the River Zambezi , until the name "Rhodesia" came into use in 1895. This was in honour of Cecil Rhodes , the British empire-builder and key figure during the British expansion into southern Africa . In 1888 Rhodes obtained mineral rights from the most powerful local traditional leaders through treaties such as the Rudd Concession and

11682-558: The territory were laid-claim-to by the Bechuana and Portugal, its first people, the "Bushmen" (or Sān or Khoisan ), had possessed it for countless centuries beforehand and had continued to inhabit the region. Following the colony's unilateral dissolution in 1970 by the Republic of Rhodesia government, the Colony of Southern Rhodesia was re-established in 1979 as the predecessor state to the Republic of Zimbabwe Rhodesia which, in-turn,

11800-671: The top five Lessing books. Indian writer Neel Mukherjee included the novel in his 2015 "top 10 books about revolutionaries", also published in The Guardian . The Good Terrorist was first published in September 1985 in hardcover by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom, and by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. The first paperback edition was published in the United Kingdom in September 1986 by Grafton . An unabridged 13-hour audio cassette edition , narrated by Nadia May,

11918-704: The types of individuals who commit terrorist acts", yet another called it "surprisingly bland", and the characters "trivial or two-dimensional or crippled by self-delusions". The Good Terrorist was shortlisted for the Booker Prize , and won the Mondello Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award . The Good Terrorist is written in the subjective third person from the point of view of Alice, an unemployed politics and economics graduate in her mid-thirties who drifts from commune to commune. She

12036-493: The white population up to 307,000. A large number of these immigrants were of British working-class origin. The black population was about 6 million. In the 1940s, the founding of a university to serve central African countries was proposed. Such a university was eventually established in Salisbury , with funding provided by the British and Southern Rhodesian governments and some private sources. One condition of British funding

12154-444: The whole social creation." However, the political form of anarchism is ultimately controlled in the novel: the only supposed politically motivated act is orchestrated by a secret government agency. Conrad's third political novel, Under Western Eyes , is connected to Russian history. Its first audience read it against the backdrop of the failed Revolution of 1905 and in the shadow of the movements and impulses that would take shape as

12272-529: The work a novel about politics, rather than a political novel per se . The Good Terrorist has also been called a satire. In her book Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change , Gayle Greene called it a "satire of a group of revolutionaries", and Susan Watkins, writing in Doris Lessing: Border Crossings , described it as a "dry and satirical examination of a woman's involvement with a left-wing splinter group". A biography of Lessing for

12390-436: The writers of proletarian literature is to lift the workers from the slums by inspiring them to embrace the possibilities of social change or of a political revolution. As such, it is a form of political fiction. The proletarian novel may comment on political events, systems, and theories, and is frequently seen as an instrument to promote social reform or political revolution among the working classes. Proletarian literature

12508-640: Was a landlocked, self-governing British Crown colony in Southern Africa , established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River . The region was informally known as South Zambesia until annexation by Britain, at the behest of Cecil Rhodes 's British South Africa Company (for whom the colony was named). The bounding territories were Bechuanaland ( Botswana ), Northern Rhodesia ( Zambia ), Portuguese Mozambique ( Mozambique ) and

12626-531: Was appointed in 1895. The whites in the territory south of the river paid it scant regard though, and generally used the name "Rhodesia" in a narrow sense to mean their part. The designation "Southern Rhodesia" was first used officially in 1898 in the Southern Rhodesia Order in Council of 20 October 1898, which applied to the area south of the Zambezi, and was more common after the BSAC merged

12744-522: Was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California; they were displeased with the book's depiction of California farmers' attitudes and conduct toward the migrants. They denounced the book as a 'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda'". Some accused Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make

12862-469: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for being "part of both the history of literature and living literature". In the award ceremony speech by Swedish writer Per Wästberg , The Good Terrorist was cited as "an in-depth account of the extreme leftwing squatting culture that sponges off female self-sacrifice". Following Lessing's death in 2013, The Guardian put The Good Terrorist in their list of

12980-578: Was controlled by the Rhodesian state. With the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia no longer in existence, in 1964, Southern Rhodesia reverted to the name Rhodesia (see next section). In 1965, Rhodesia unilaterally declared itself independent under a white-dominated government led by Ian Smith . After a long civil war ensued between the white (until 1979) government and two African majority, Soviet Bloc -aligned 'liberation movements' ( Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army and Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army ). The Salisbury government, realizing

13098-564: Was followed by Sybil; or, The Two Nations (1845), another political novel, which was less idealistic and more clear-eyed than Coningsby ; the "two nations" of its subtitle referred to the huge economic and social gap between the privileged few and the deprived working classes. The last of Disraeli's political-novel trilogy, Tancred; or, The New Crusade (1847), promoted the Church of England's role in reviving Britain's flagging spirituality. Ivan Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons (1862) as

13216-415: Was limited to those shareholders, the electorate was almost exclusively white settlers. Over time as more settlers arrived and a growing number had less than the amount of land required to own a share in the company or where in trades supporting the company as workers, successive activism resulted in first increasing the proportion of elected seats, and eventually allowing non-share holders the right to vote in

13334-688: Was living in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ). She was attracted to a group of "quasi-Communist[s]" and joined the chapter of the Left Book Club in Salisbury (now Harare ). Later, prompted by the conflicts arising from racial segregation prominent in Rhodesia at the time, she also joined the Southern Rhodesian Labour Party . Lessing moved to London in 1949 and began her writing career there. She became

13452-556: Was not well received by some of her readers, who felt she had abandoned her "rational worldview". The Good Terrorist was Lessing's first book to be published after the Canopus in Argos series, which prompted several retorts from reviewers, including, "Lessing has returned to Earth", and "Lessing returns to reality". Several commentators have labelled The Good Terrorist as a satire, while Lessing called it humorous. She said: [I]t's not

13570-447: Was released in the United States in April 1999 by Blackstone Audio . The novel has been translated into several other languages including Catalan, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Political fiction Plato 's Republic , a Socratic dialogue written around 380 BC, has been one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory , both intellectually and historically. The Republic

13688-492: Was responsible for popularizing the use of the term " nihilism ", which became widely used after the novel was published. The Polish writer Bolesław Prus ' novel, Pharaoh (1895), is set in the Egypt of 1087–85 BCE as that country experiences internal stresses and external threats that will culminate in the fall of its Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom . The young protagonist Ramses learns that those who would challenge

13806-616: Was that student admission should be based on "academic achievement and good character" with no racial distinction. University College of Rhodesia (UCR) received its first intake of students in 1952. Until 1971 it awarded degrees of the Universities of London and Birmingham. In 1971 UCR became the University of Rhodesia and began awarding its own degrees. In 1980 it was renamed the University of Zimbabwe . In 1953, with calls for independence mounting in many of its African possessions,

13924-404: Was the predecessor state of the Republic of Zimbabwe . Its only true geographical borders were the rivers Zambezi and Limpopo , its other boundaries being (more or less) arbitrary, and merging imperceptibly with the peoples and domains of earlier chiefdoms of pre-colonial times. The British colony was established de jure in 1923, having earlier been occupied, constructed and administered by

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