Doris Lessing - The Grass is singing -1950 -240p

Born in 1919 in Persia. Her family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) in 1925, to live a rough life farming maize
She was married twice (and twice divorced) and had three children. Her second husband was Gottfried Lessing, a German emigrant. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published in London in 1949, after she had moved to Europe, where she has been living ever since.
The Grass is singing
The Grass is Singing" is at once a simple story and a complex psychological and social analysis. It is a commentary on race relations in imperial Rhodesia, and an exploration of the timeless dichotomy of culture and nature.

The book is perhaps most interesting when the author describes the ideology of white colonists in Africa. In particular, the idea that extreme racism develops out of a need to justify economic exploitation is poignantly posed. It is not that whites oppress blacks because they hate them, rather they hate them because they have to oppress them and deny their human worth to maintain their standard of living. Thus, newcomers from Britain must be taught how to deal with and feel about the natives, and poor whites are despised because they seem to blur the color lines.