Doris Lessing’s caustic satire, The Good Terrorist still reads as a bracing antidote to political righteousnes. Here, John Mullen discussed the novel’s impact.
The Good Terrorist
Written by Doris Lessing
- Shortlisted
- The Booker Prize 1985
- Published by Jonathan Cape
Buy the book
Radical ideology struggles against a bourgeois upbringing as a conscience rebels in Doris Lessing’s compelling revolutionary satire
In contemporary London, a loose-knit group of political vagabonds form an ill-defined and volatile underground. Drifting from one cause to the next, they occupy abandoned houses, demonstrate and picket, devise strategies to fit situations that may or may not arise. But, within this world, one small group of men and women - whose deepest conviction seems to rest in a sense of their own largely untested radicalism - is moving inexorably toward active terrorism.
Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing is widely considered one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007
More about Doris Lessing 
Other nominated books by Doris Lessing
In the third book of Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series, Earth continues to evolve under manipulation by advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations
An incoherent man is found wandering the streets of London, at the start of Doris Lessing’s brilliant and disturbing novel about madness and release
Features
- Book recommendations
10 of the best Booker Prize-nominated books with a political slant
- Book recommendations
Where to start with Doris Lessing: a guide to her best works
- Book extract
An extract from The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing
- Book recommendations
Book of the Month: The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing
- Reading guides
