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Portrait of Doris Lessing

Literature · Novelists

Doris Lessing

1919–2013 · British (born in Persia, raised in Southern Rhodesia)

Realist, feminist and speculative fiction

Doris Lessing, born in Persia and raised on a farm in Southern Rhodesia, wrote about colonial Africa, communism, women's lives and, later, cosmic science fiction. Her formally daring The Golden Notebook became a landmark for the women's movement, and in 2007 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, at 88 the oldest literature laureate up to that time.

How to spot them

  • ▸Born in Kermanshah, Persia; grew up in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
  • ▸The Golden Notebook: Anna Wulf's black, red, yellow and blue notebooks
  • ▸Nobel Prize 2007, called 'that epicist of the female experience'
  • ▸Published two novels as 'Jane Somers' to test how unknown authors are treated
  • ▸Canopus in Argos science-fiction sequence; Sufi influence

Key works

The Grass Is Singing (1950)

Debut novel: the murder of a white farmer's wife, Mary Turner, by her African servant in Southern Rhodesia

Children of Violence (1952–1969)

Five-novel sequence following Martha Quest from Rhodesia to London, ending with The Four-Gated City

The Golden Notebook (1962)

Writer Anna Wulf splits her life into four coloured notebooks before uniting them in a golden one

The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)

A woman watches society collapse in a near-future city from her flat

Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983)

Five-volume 'space fiction' series beginning with Shikasta

The Good Terrorist (1985)

Satire of a squat of would-be revolutionaries in London; won the W. H. Smith Literary Award

The Fifth Child (1988)

A family is torn apart by the birth of their strange, violent son Ben

Key ideas

  • Nobel citation: 'that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny'
  • The Golden Notebook's fragmented structure mirrors a divided self; she resisted being labelled a feminist icon
  • Moved from realist fiction about race and politics to mystical and speculative work influenced by Sufism

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia (Iran), in 1919; left school at about 14
  • •Moved to London in 1949 with the manuscript of The Grass Is Singing
  • •Declared a 'prohibited immigrant' by Southern Rhodesia and South Africa in 1956 for her anti-apartheid views
  • •A member of the Communist Party in the 1950s, she left after the Soviet invasion of Hungary
  • •The Diaries of Jane Somers were published under a pseudonym and initially rejected by her own publisher
  • •Turned down a damehood, but accepted appointment as a Companion of Honour (1999)
  • •Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007; told reporters outside her house that she had won 'all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one'
  • •Her autobiography volumes are Under My Skin (1994) and Walking in the Shade (1997)
  • •Died in London in November 2013

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources