Doris Lessing

Ben, in the World

(The Sequel to The Fifth Child)

HarperCollinsPublishers

BEN, IN THE WORLD. Copyright © 2000 by Doris Lessing. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

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'The Cages' were described to me in miserable detail ten years ago by someone who had seen them in a research institute in London. Here they are set in Brazil, because of the exigencies of the plot, but I am sure no such unpleasant phenomenon exists in Brazil.

The authorities have cleared the gangs of criminal children from the streets of the centre of Rio. They are no longer permitted to annoy tourists.

My grateful thanks, as always, to my agent Jonathan Clowes, and in particular for the contributions he has made to this story of Ben Lovatt, the Fifth Child.

And my gratitude too to Suzette Macedo for her advice on the Brazilian part of the book; and to Martin Copertari who helped me with information about conditions in north-west Argentina, a splendidly beautiful part of the world.

'How old are you?'

'Eighteen.'

This reply did not come at once because Ben was afraid of what he knew was going to happen now, which was that the young man behind the glass protecting him from the public set down his biro on the form he was filling in, and then, with a look on his face that Ben knew only too well, inspected his client.