November 2007 - The Good Terrorist

I had been lovingly playing my choice over in my mind for weeks. Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah Is Not Obliged.

I've spent a good few years frustrated that I couldn't buy it for anyone I know because it was only available in French. How I've longed to discuss it with someone else. Lo and behold! An English translation. The two reviews I'd read, however, left me slightly concerned.

Picking up a copy two weekends ago confirmed my worst fears. The first page had me cringing and rapidly replacing the book on the shelf. The translation does not do it justice.

Something else was needed.

Lessing had just won the Nobel Prize. There was a gaping void on the shelf in the bookshop. We guessed the books had been taken to create a display...if so, it was well hidden. We returned to the shelf - two of us, two copies of The Good Terrorist. Book chosen.


In a London squat a band of bourgeois revolutionaries are united by a loathing of the waste and cruelty they see around them as they try desperately to become involved in terrorist activities far beyond their level of competence.

Only Alice seems capable of organising anything. Motherly, practical and determined, she is also easily exploited by the group and ideal fodder for a more dangerous and potent cause. Eventually their naive radical fantasies turn into a chaos of real destruction, but the aftermath is not as exciting as they had hoped. Nonetheless, while they may not have changed the world, their lives will never be the same again.

British Council: Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing website

Having been published in 1985 reviews on the web have been a little difficult to come by:

'Alice, the Radical Homemaker' Denis Donoghue. 22 September 1985.
'Bad Housekeeping' Alison Lurie. The New York Review of Books. 19 December 1985.
'Dark Times' Jane Rogers. The Guardian. 3 December 2005.