Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Lessing, Doris - 1971

Jonathan Cape. First UK edition and first print published by Jonathan Cape in 1971. This is a near fine copy. The complete wrapper has very little wear at all save for a tiny amount of rubbing to a couple of corner tips. There are no tears or chips. It is not price clipped. There is a small previous booksellers sticker tothe inside board. The book has no foxing or ink and very little handling wear. Overall a near fine copy. This copy is signed by the author to the title page, without dedication. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Doris Lessing imagines the fantastical "inner-space" life of an amnesiac. Charles Watkins, a Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, has suffered a breakdown, confined to a mental hospital as his friends and doctors attempt to bring him back to reality. But Watkins has embarked on a tremendous pyschological adventure that takes him from a spinning raft in the Atlantic to a ruined stone city on a tropical island to an outer-space journey through singing planets. As he travels in his mind through memory and the farther reaches of imagination, his doctors try to subdue him with ever more powerful drugs in a competition for his soul. . Near Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 1971.