Alfred and Emily is a 2008 part fiction, part memoir book by British Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

-winner Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....

 (b. 1919). The story is structured in two parts and is based on the lives of Lessing's parents. The first is a novella, a fictional portrait of how her parents lives would have been without the interruption of the First World War. The second part is a retelling of how her parents lives really were.

Plot synopsis

The novella begins in England in 1902 where Alfred and Emily meet at a cricket match. However as the novel progresses to 1916, the pair do not marry as in real life. Instead they flourish separately, Alfred becomes a farmer and shares a happy marriage with Betsy. The absence of the war in this fictional portrait means Alfred is spared his crippling war wounds. Elsewhere Emily is spared her real-life role as nurse where she endured the agony of nursing desperately ill soldiers without the aid of morphine. Emily marries a doctor, but he soon dies and she is left a childless and wealthy widow. She channels her financial resources into philanthropic projects such as establishing schools for the poor.

The memoir transports Alfred and Emily to married life where they are farming unhappily in Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesia was the name of the British colony situated north of the Limpopo River and the Union of South Africa. From its independence in 1965 until its extinction in 1980, it was known as Rhodesia...

. The unhappiness of her parent's lives is explained by a series of Lessing's own childhood episodes.

Reception

The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

described the book as "perfectly crafted" and a "quietly extraordinary meditation on family". The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

praised the book "In its generosity of spirit, its shaped and contained fury, “Alfred and Emily” is also an extraordinary, unconventional addition to Lessing’s autobiography." The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

applauded the structure; "allowing her readers this insight into the connection between autobiography and fiction, between form and content, she reaffirms fiction's powers and possibilities." In an interview with TIME

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

published shortly before the book's release, Lessing revealed that Alfred and Emily was her final book.