The story is told from the point of view of the matriarchal utopian Zone Three, and is about gender conflict and the breaking down of barriers between the sexes.

The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five was adapted as an opera by composer Philip Glass with story-libretto by Lessing, and premiered in German in Heidelberg, Germany in May 1997.

Ben Ata is not used to the company of women he cannot control, and Al•Ith has difficulty relating to this ill-bred man, but in time they grow accustomed to each other and gain new insights into each other's Zones.

Al•Ith, drawn by its allure, tries to enter Zone Two, but finds an unworldly and inhospitable place and is told by invisible people that it is not her time yet.

But Ben Ata's marriage to Al•Ith has changed him, and he disbands most of his armies in Zone Four, sending the soldiers home to rebuild their towns and villages and uplift their communities.

When Lessing published Shikasta in 1979, the first book in her Canopus in Argos series, it represented a major shift of focus for the author.

In her earlier books, Lessing had established a name for herself as a writer of realistic fiction;[4] in Shikasta she introduced her readers to the spiritual and mystical themes in Sufism.

[20] Shikasta was originally intended to be a single self-contained book, but Lessing's fictional universe developed, and she ended up writing a series of five.

"[25] Lessing said in 1983 that she would like to write stories about red and white dwarfs, space rockets powered by anti-gravity, and charmed and coloured quarks, "[b]ut we can't all be physicists".

Comparative literature professor Robert Alter suggested that this kind of writing belongs to a genre that literary critic Northrop Frye called the "anatomy", which is "a combination of fantasy and morality".

[29] Author Gore Vidal placed Lessing's science fiction between John Milton and L. Ron Hubbard".

[30] American screenwriter and film director Frank Pierson called Lessing's science fiction "mythic tale[s]" that are closer to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Herbert's Dune than works by Clarke and Asimov.

[13] It focuses on, what Time magazine reviewer Paul Gray calls, the "struggles between men and women and the dimensions of sex and love".

She argues that the premise of the story is that "cosmic order is ideally realized when men and women cross the gender divide and attempt genuine communication—sexually, emotionally ... thereby setting the preconditions for the attainment of enlightened consciousness.

[34] Author Thelma J. Shinn says that, as in Shikasta, Lessing's "pessimistic view of human capabilities still keeps control in a benevolent power rather than in the hands of the individual".

[36] Literature academic Jayne Ashleigh Glover says that while Zone Three on the surface appears to be a feminist utopia, Lessing shows that it is far from idyllic.

[2] Critic John Leonard, in a review in The New York Times, described The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five as "a remarkable recovery" from Shikasta, which he called a "disaster".

While she is still "passionate, opinionated and outraged" here, Pierson said Lessing has withdrawn from writing about the real world and chosen to "soar unsteady currents of whimsy, dreams [and] mysticism".

Paul Gray remarked in a review in Time magazine, that contrary to appearances, The Marriages is not a feminist parable, but added that while Lessing often wrote about gender conflict, she has never done it "with more sweetness, compassion and wisdom" than she has in this novel.

While the review was critical of Lessing's prose style, and called her descriptions of the Zone Four war economy "a silly cartoon sketch", it said that "there is a ... generosity about this work not quite like anything she has done".

[14] Reviewing the novel in the Roswell Daily Record, American journalist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called The Marriages one of Lessing's more accessible books because, in his opinion, her tendency to philosophise works better in fantasy than in other formats.

The two-act opera for orchestra, chorus and soloists had its world premier in Heidelberg, Germany in May 1997 under the direction of Thomas Kalb (music) and Birgitta Trommler (stage), with libretto translated into German by Saskia M.

"[47] A new production of the opera, directed by Harry Silverstein with music conducted by Robert Kaminskas, premiered for the first time in English in the United States in June 2001 at the Merle Reskin Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.

[46][48] The German premiere was not well received by the press, and Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein found faults in the United States production.

[49] In 1988, Glass had adapted another book from the Canopus in Argos series, The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, into a three-act opera with story-libretto by Lessing.

[51] The opera premiered in Houston, Texas in July 1988,[52] and received a lukewarm review by New York Times music critic John Rockwell.

[1] The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five has been translated into several other languages including Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.