Doris Lessing is a novelist from whom one always expects bold perception, and turning to the contemporary problem of terrorism she looks at it from a slanting angle. The young bourgeois Marxists stumble into terrorism the real thing without being psychologically or realistically prepared for the consequences. They fail to change the world; but will they be able to deal with the changes they have wrought in themselves? A compelling, vivid, surprisingly often humorous novel, first published in 1985.