Doris Lessing (born October 22, 1919), British writer, born Doris May Taylor in Persia (Iran).
Her family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) in 1925, to live a rough life farming maize. Unfortunately, the thousand acres of bush failed to yield wealth, thwarting her mother's desire to live the life of a Victorian in "savage lands".
Despite this difficult and unhappy childhood, Lessing's writings about life in British Africa are filled with a compassion for both the sterile lives of the British colonists and the plight of the indigenous inhabitants.
She was married twice (and twice divorced) and had three children. Her second husband was Gottfried Lessing, a German emigrant. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in London in 1949, after she had moved to Europe, where she has been living ever since.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature for her works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
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Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three distinct phases: The Communist theme 1944-1956 when she was writing radically on social issues, The psychological theme 1956-1969 and after that The Sufi theme which was explored in the Canopus series (see below). After the sufist themas Lessing has worked in all three areas.
Her novel The Golden Notebook is considered a feminist classic among many scholars, but notably not by the author herself. This novel also allegedly made Lessing a candidate for the nobel prize, but her later science fiction books (The Canopus series) may have discredited her, so that she was removed from the list. Lessing does not like the idea of being recognized as a feminist author. When asked why, Lessing replies (New York Times, July 25, 1982):
Literary Style
When asked about which of her books she considers most important, Lessing choose the Canopus in Argos series. These books are based partly on sufi concepts, to which Lessing was introduced by Idries Shah. Earlier works of "inner space" fiction like Briefing for a Descent into Hell and Memoirs of a Survivor also connects to this theme.
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