It is the fifth book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series[1] and comprises a set of documents that describe the final days of the Volyen Empire, located at the edge of our galaxy and under the influence of three other galactic empires, the benevolent Canopus, the tyrannical Sirius, and the malicious Shammat of Puttiora.

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire is a social satire written in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell,[2] and focuses on the debasement of language in political rhetoric.

Klorathy, a senior Canopean Colonial administrator, is sent to Volyen to observe the unfolding events, and to monitor Incent, one of his agents who has been caught up in the sentiment of the revolutionary rhetoric.

Incent has also fallen prey to Krolgul's propaganda and is withdrawn from the field by Klorathy and placed in a Hospital for Rhetorical Diseases on Volyendesta.

[11] The Five were defeated and Sirius resumed its expansion, but this time with an uncontrolled brutality that turned the Sirian Empire into a tyranny.

The troops, themselves colonial subjects of the now declining Sirian Empire, had been told that Volyen was poor and deprived and needed Sirius's help.

"[3] In another New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani writes that in this book Lessing has "narrowed her cosmic focus to a specific issue, namely the manipulative use of language and words" which, she believes, was handled with "more acerbity and more humour" by George Orwell in Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).