The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire is the fifth volume in Doris Lessing’s celebrated space fiction series, Canopus in Argos: Archives’. In this interlinked quintet of novels, she creates a new, extraordinary cosmos where the fate of the Earth is influenced by the rivalries and interactions of three powerful galactic empires, Canopus, Sirius and their enemy, Puttiora. Blending myth, fable and allegory, Doris Lessing’s astonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the history of our own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction.

This final book in the ‘Canopus’ cycle is set in the outermost regions of the Argos galaxy, where the once peaceful and undeveloped planets of the Volyen Empire have been plunged into dangerous instability. Here, a ruling caste has enslaved the majority of the Empire’s citizens. Invasions, revolutions, riots and ideological fervour dominate its life. Incent, a Canopean emissary sent to survey the turmoil, is swayed by the intoxicat- ing political climate, rapidly and disastrously losing his objectivity, his grip on reality itself.