Note General : The Grass is Singing is Doris Lessing's classic first novel. It is the story of the murder of a poor white woman by her balck houseboy. It is a portrait of the woman's marriage to a luckless farmer, a union doomed to failure before they had even met. And it is an evocation of the country in which they lived - Rhodesia. In The Grass is Singin, the hars, majestic beauty and the remorseless social values of white Southern Africa come violently, brilliantly to life.