On the basis of this book alone, Doris Lessing must be counted as one of the most important fiction writers of our times. African Stories includes every story Miss Lessing has written about Africa, that continent whose "tragedy must play itself slowly out," but they are also about every continent where people are human and helpless.

Miss Lessing's style is a traditional one, unmarked by hysteria or hurry. She has a remarkable gift for good beginnings, and the tension in her stories is the kind given off by people we think of as "real"—men and women who impart a sense of motives and feelings, of a past and future, and a quality of mysterious reserve even though they may be commonplace characters…. Miss Lessing, as a writer, has many advantages. And she uses them, certainly, to produce some intensely imagined prose. But that these advantages can also...