 The Good Terrorist has also been called a satire . In her book Doris Lessing : The Poetics of Change , Gayle Greene called it a " satire of a group of revolutionaries " , and Susan Watkins , writing in Doris Lessing : Border Crossings , described it as a " dry and satirical examination of a woman 's involvement with a left @-@ wing splinter group " . A biography of Lessing for the Swedish Academy on the occasion of her winning the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature described the book as " a satirical picture of the need of the contemporary left for total control and the female protagonist 's misdirected martyrdom and subjugation " . Yelin said the novel " oscillat [ ed ] between satire and nostalgia " . Academic Robert E. Kuehn felt that it is not satire at all . He stated while the book could have been a " satire of the blackest and most hilarious kind " , in his opinion Lessing " has no sense of humor , and instead of lashing [ the characters ] with the satirist 's whip , she treats them with unremitting and belittling irony " . 
