Dorothy Schwartz is a woman who lives in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, and a friend of Doris Lessing. Doris meets Dorothy when they are both young women working at a telephone exchange, and Dorothy is the one who first introduces Doris to the local community of Communists in Southern Rhodesia. Doris and Dorothy remain friends through the end of the book, when Dorothy moves to London the same time that Doris and Gottfried do, and Gottfried rents a room in her apartment.