In the third book ofDoris Lessing’s Canopus in Argosseries, Earth continues to evolve under manipulation by advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations.As three galactic empires fight for control of the human race, the novel charts the gradual moral awakening of its narrator, Ambien II, a ‘dry, dutiful, efficient’ female Sirian administrator. Witnessing the wanton colonisation of land and people, Ambien begins to question her involvement in such insidious experimentation, as her faith in the possibility of genuine human progress grows weaker every day."After a digression into sexual politics (The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five), Lessing's science-fiction cycle returns to the broad sociological preoccupations of Shikasta (1979) ...Demanding and uningratiating, then, but — like previous Canopus volumes — worth the effort of readers attuned to the very biggest questions."-Kirkus ReviewsDoris Lessingis widely considered one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Among her most celebrated novels are The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark and Memoirs of a Survivor. Lessing was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times: Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Sirian Experiments (1981) and The Good Terrorist (1985). She was also shortlisted, for her entire body of work, for The Man Booker International Prize 2005 and 2007.