Oct

11

Doris Lessing Is Dynamite!

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

October 11, 2007 |

Doris Lessing is this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s both good news for those of us who have read her work for a long time and also a surprise, coming forty-five years after what many consider her best work, The Golden Notebook.

Lessing has long been known as a feminist writer, and, certainly, many of her works would fall into that category. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and short stories such as To Room Nineteen, have central female characters who are imprisoned by, and struggle against, the oppression of men. Many of these works have a terrible sense of inevitability; their heroines often lose the struggle. And yet there is much more to Lessing than any single label could encompass. Her short stories and novels cover a broad spectrum of the human condition, and she wrote a philosophical work titled Prisons We Choose To Live Inside, primarily built around studies of group behavior.

Doris Lessing was born Doris Taylor in Persia, now called Iran, on October 22nd, 1919. Her family then moved to Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, before moving to Britain. Lessing has been called a feminist, a great writer, and an experimental novelist. She can also now be called a Nobel Prize winner.


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1 Comment so far

  1. The Best Of The Best. :: Just Write on December 19, 2007 12:02 am

    [...] of course Doris Lessing is this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize For [...]

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