Briefing for a Descent into Hell

Briefing for a Descent into Hell is a psychological novel by the British novelist Doris Lessing. It was first published in 1971 and shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize.

Plot

The novel begins when a well-dressed but dishevelled man is found wandering alone at night on London's Embankment. Unable to remember anything, he is escorted to a psychiatric hospital, where he is identified as Charles Watkins, a professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge. An example of what Lessing called "inner space fiction", the novel contrasts Watkins's fantastical accounts of his own semi-mystical hallucinations – including being adrift on a raft in the Atlantic and flying through outer space – with the doctors' and nurses' increasingly draconian attempts to sedate and "cure" the patient.

Release

Briefing for a Descent into Hell was first published in hardback in the United Kingdom and United States in 1971 through Jonathan Cape and Alfred A. Knopf, respectively.

Reception

In a largely negative review in The New York Times, Joan Didion described the novel's grappling with questions of sanity and insanity as "less than astonishing stuff". Didion noted parallels between the novel and the writings of Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing.

Further reading

• Bolling, Douglass (1973). "Structure and Theme in "Briefing for a Descent into Hell"". Contemporary Literature. 14 (4): 550–564. doi:10.2307/1207472. ISSN 0010-7484. JSTOR 1207472.
• Fishburn, Katherine (1988). "Doris Lessing's "Briefing for a Descent into Hell": Science Fiction or Psycho-Drama? ("Briefing for a Descent into Hell" de Doris Lessing, science-fiction ou psychodrame?)". Science Fiction Studies. 15 (1): 48–60. ISSN 0091-7729. JSTOR 4239858.