Alfred y Emily

Few authors have succeeded in rewriting the past. Doris Lessing sought to pay tribute to her parents by imagining what their futures might have been had the First World War not cut them short. The conflict rippled across generations, weighing like a curse upon the childhood of young Doris, who spent her life trying to escape "that monstrous legacy." To achieve this, in the first part of the book, she creates a world for them in which the war never occurred—an exercise in freedom that, in the second part, gives way to an act of remembrance, as she recounts how their lives actually unfolded, first in England and later in Africa. Through her narrative and old photographs, we follow the journey of a family that becomes a reflection of countless other lives touched by this tragedy. Part fiction, part autobiography—a skillful blend of invention and memory—this final work by the Nobel laureate demonstrates that literature, in capable hands, can soften inherited burdens, reconstruct the past, and offer a glimpse of alternative outcomes.