HarperCollins, 282 pp, $32.95, hardcover.

I've always found it vaguely amusing that my uncle Tom, whom I resemble, is the kind of bibliomane whose home is less a library than a mausoleum of books, great tottering stacks of them piled on top of every conceivable surface. Amusing, that is, until my own burdened shelves failed to disgorge my copy of Mara and Dann, the 1999 predecessor to Doris Lessing's new and clumsily titled The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and The Snow Dog. A disorderly archive is an abomination-but far less heartbreaking than a library that crumbles into dust, as happens in Lessing's latest.

Storage issues aside, I remember enough of Mara and Dann to recall that I felt very much the same way about it as I do about this sequel. Impatience, early on, gives way to enchantment; as the willing suspension of disbelief kicks in, the unlikeliness of Lessing's scenario fades away.

At first, you might be vexed, as I was. Who are these people, with their four-letter names-Dann, Durk, Kass-and parched, telegraphic conversations? Why does Lessing find them worthy of her attention? Why isn't she writing more books like The Good Terrorist or Love, Again, books about people who are at least somewhat familiar?

But never underestimate the skills of a master storyteller. As Lessing fills in the details-we're traversing the coast of North Africa, now a foggy, marshy wilderness thanks to an apocalyptic ice age that has erased the cities of Yerrup-and fleshes out her characters, we're drawn into their harsh, war-torn existence. We may be 10,000 years into the future, but people are living like this in Iraq and Afghanistan today; Lessing's nearly science-free science fiction is really about right now. As such, it's an inducement to keep a clear head, to remember that power corrupts, and most of all to guard our libraries, for even the most unkempt is a treasure.