Nobel laureate Doris Lessing’s classic novel of the pivotal summer in one woman’s life is a brilliant excursion into the terrifying gulf between youth and old age.

As the summer begins, Kate Brown–attractive, intelligent, forty-five, happily married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children–has no reason to expect that anything will change. But by summer’s end the woman she was–living behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caring–no longer exists. The Summer Before the Dark takes us along on Kate’s journey: from London to Turkey to Spain, from husband to lover to madness, on the road to a frightening new independence and a confrontation with herself that lets her finally and truly come of age.