This is a stunning new edition of the classic African story collection, by Nobel-Prize winner Doris Lessing. In this superb volume of African stories, Doris Lessing paints a magnificent portrait of the country in which she grew up. The cruelties of the white man towards the native, `the amorphous black mass, like tadpoles, faceless, who existed merely to serve`, the English settlers, ill at ease, the gamblers and moneymakers searching for diamonds and gold, and the presence, `latent always in the blood`, of Africa itself, its majestic beauty and timeless landscape: Doris Lessing draws them all together into a powerful, memorable vision.As Doris Lessing says:`It can be said of all white-dominated Africa that it was -- and still is -- the Old Chief`s Country. So all the stories I write of a certain kind I think of as belonging under that heading; tales about white people, sometimes about black people, living in a landscape that not so very long ago was settled by black tribes, living in complex societies that the white people are only just beginning to study, let alone understand.`