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The surreal world of Doris Lessing’s Playing the Game (Harper Collins, £6.99, ISBN 0 586 21689 8) will drag you from your Christmas stupor. Amid brilliant illustrations of an apocalyptic world, comic-strip characters Spacer Joe and Francesca Bird speak in abstract rhyming couplets and seek a better life. Their desperate dealings with fate will leave you as refreshed and exhilarated as any walk in the winter countryside.