About the book
Johnny Blakeworthy was a polite and gentle bigamist, a vagrant who concluded each of his many 'marriages' with a thank toy letter and ended his life known to the African villagers among whom he lived as 'The Man Who Has No Woman'. Hetty Pennefather was the embattled owner of an equally embattled cat who rejected the traditional occupations of widowhood for the free life of a rag-trader. Ephraim was a middle-aged diamond-cutter who fell in love with the daughter of an Alexandrian merchant and made his life a glittering homage to her. these richly individual characters appear together in The Story of a Non-Marrying Man, perhaps Doris Lessing's most enjoyable collection.