In this profoundly moving book, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. In the fictional first half of , she imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the devastating global conflict. "Here I still am," says Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with , she has done just that.