The Fifth Child

This novel from Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing is an exploration of the debates and fears around parenthood. Provocative and uncanny, The Fifth Child is a chilling tale for our times. Four children, a beautiful old house, the love of relatives and friends – Harriet and David Lovatt’s life is a glorious hymn to domestic bliss and old-fashioned family values. But when their fifth child is born, an implacable shadow is cast over this tender idyll. The infant Ben is violent and uncontrollable. Struggling to care for her new-born child, faced with a darkness and a strange defiance she has never known before, Harriet is deeply afraid of what, exactly, she has brought into the world …