num_pages: 327
description: "I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do."  — Barbara Kingsolver Intelligent, sensitive, and fiercely passionate, Martha Quest is a young woman living on a farm in Africa, feeling her way through the torments of adolescence and early womanhood. She is a romantic idealistic in revolt against the puritan snobbery of her parents, trying to live to the full with every nerve, emotion, and instinct laid bare to experience. For her, this is a time of solitary reading daydreams, dancing — and the first disturbing encounters with sex. The first of Doris Lessing's timeless Children of Violence novels, Martha Quest is an endearing masterpiece.
language: English
title: Martha Quest
titlecomplete: Martha Quest (Children of Violence, #1)
characters: Martha Quest
genres: Literature, Classics, Novels, Zimbabwe, Coming Of Age, Nobel Prize, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Africa, British Literature
ratings_count: 2438
places: United Kingdom
series: Children of Violence
publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics