Fictions of Time and Space

This essay argues for a fuller recognition of the key transitional status The Four-Gated City (1969) in Doris Lessing’s career. As an attempt to recalibrate basic coordinates realist inheritance, novel develops strongly spatial narrative mode that coincides with desire write utopian collective. is confirmed both by previously unstudied draft material Briefing Descent into Hell (1971) and published texts followed. However, this break from destructive globalization postwar era becomes deeply problematic through its handling history time. Examining struggle writing can shed light on how interplay space time informs intertwined histories realism modernism twentieth-century fiction, work contributes current debates about possible futures novel.