Briefing for a Descent Into Hell: A Psychological ThrillerIn this ambitious novel of madness and release, 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. In this provocative novel, Lessing takes us on a harrowing voyage into the rarely glimpsed territory of the inner mind. |
Contents
Section 1 | 2 |
Section 2 | 3 |
Section 3 | 4 |
Section 4 | 8 |
Section 5 | 16 |
Section 6 | 26 |
Section 7 | 32 |
Section 8 | 34 |
Section 16 | 170 |
Section 17 | 172 |
Section 18 | 210 |
Section 19 | 214 |
Section 20 | 218 |
Section 21 | 220 |
Section 22 | 246 |
Section 23 | 276 |
Section 9 | 40 |
Section 10 | 122 |
Section 11 | 136 |
Section 12 | 150 |
Section 13 | 152 |
Section 14 | 154 |
Section 15 | 156 |
Section 24 | 288 |
Section 25 | 290 |
Section 26 | 292 |
Section 27 | 294 |
Section 28 | 304 |
Section 29 | 307 |
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Common terms and phrases
already animals beast become believe better bird breath changed Charles close cold coming course creature dark DEAR doctor doctor Y don't dream earth edge expect eyes face fact fall feeling Felicity fighting forest Frederick friends give hands hard head held human Italy keep kind knew leave lecture light live look mean memory miles mind moon moved never night nurse once patient perhaps person planets poor possible Professor pulse raft reached remember rock running seemed seen showed side sleep sound stand stay stone stood sure talking tell thing thought took trees turned understand village waiting wake walked wall watch Watkins waves weeks whole wife wind women