Thousands of years in the future, all the northern hemisphere is buried hundreds of feet deep under the ice and snow of a new Ice Age. At the southern end of a large landmass called Ifrik, two children of the Mahondi people, seven-year-old Mara and her younger brother, Dann, are abducted from their home and family in the middle of the night. Left in the care of a sympathetic Mahondi woman, Mara and Dann are raised as outsiders in a poor rural village. They learn to survive the hardships and dangers of a life threatened as much by an unforgiving climate and menacing animals as by a hostile community of Rock People who wish them ill. Eventually they join the great human migration North, away from the drought that is turning the southern land to dust, and in search of a place with enough water and food to support human life.

Trekking through a barren countryside, Mara and Dann discover different people and places and survive a series of hazardous adventures. They outwit hostile travelers and city dwellers who would kill them for a pittance, and join the increasingly desperate struggle for subsistence in a world transformed by unpreditable climatic change. Captured and enslaved by the Hardon people, they eventually escape and continue North, through the wet heat of the River Towns, only to be captures again by a military commander in the country of Charad. Dann becomes a general in the army, while Mara is recruited as a spy and even abducted for breeding purposes by a rival ethnic group. Traveling across the continent, the siblings enter cities rife with crime , power struggles, and corruption, learning as much about human nature as about how societies function.

Mara's mind is as restless as her feet, and she hungers after knowledge and answers to her questions: Who are my parents? Where do Dann and I come from? Who once lived in these ruined cities we find in Ifrik, and when? And why did they disappear? What will we find up North, and where, exactly, is the North? All the while she dreams of water, trees, and beautiful cities, and of gentle, friendly people. Powerful natural forces, indifferent to human life but essential to its survival, determine the course of Mara and Dann's journey. And Marawith a thirst to learn almost as strong as her thirst for water, and a compassionate, loving nature that survives despite the cruelty of the environment and of human behavioris one of Doris Lessing's most appealing heroines. Filled with shrewd observations and a clear-eyed vision of the human condition, Mara and Dann is imaginative fiction at its best from a master of the genre.

多麗絲·萊辛（Doris Lessing，1919- ），四十年來被尊為女權偶像人物的英國文學老祖母，與伍爾芙並稱“雙星”。

數次獲諾貝爾文學奬和布剋奬提名。

1919年齣生於伊朗，幼年度過瞭一戰後有如毒氣彈下的生活。

十五歲因眼疾輟學，改以自修方式遍讀文學，後來做過電話接綫員、保姆、速記員等。

曾兩次結婚並離異，1949年攜幼子移居英國，全部傢當是皮包中的一部小說草稿。該書不久以《野草在歌唱》為題齣版，使萊辛一舉成名。

1962年，代錶作《金色筆記》推齣，作為極易引起爭議的鴻篇巨製，成為其摘得諾貝爾奬桂冠的最充分理由。

1999年，萊辛創作瞭深受新一代青年讀者喜愛的史詩般的預言(寓言)小說《瑪拉和丹恩曆險記》。