Children of Violence

The Children of Violence is a series of five semi-autobiographical novels by British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing: Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969).[1]

The series follows the life of protagonist Martha Quest from adolescence until her death, which takes place in the future, in the year 1997. The first four novels are set during the 1930s and 1940s, in the fictional country of Zambezia, based on the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where Lessing lived from 1925 until 1949.[2] The fifth work, The Four-Gated City, is a science fiction dystopia set in London, from the 1950s into a future where World War Three takes place.