Lessing’s fiction is divided into works on a Communist theme (1944–56), a psychological theme (her books from 1956–1969), and a Sufi theme, which was explored in the “Canopus in Argos” sequence of science fiction novels and novellas. Her breakthrough work, “The Golden Notebook”, was written in 1962. “The Grass is Singing” is set in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, depicted the brutalities of colonialism and racial segregation. The book was made into a film in 1981 that featured respected actors John Thaw, Karen Black and John Kani in the lead roles. In 1956, because of her campaigning against nuclear arms and apartheid, she was declared a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Her first novel, “The Grass Is Singing”, was published in 1950. I would have ended up an alcoholic or a frustrated intellectual like my mother.” Cover design of the first edition of the book, published by Michael Joseph, London, 1950 The redesigned cover of the reissue of the book in 2002.
I mean women did not do that but there is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. I felt I wasn’t the best person to bring them up. I had no money. What on earth else was I supposed to do? For a long time I felt I had done a very brave thing. But I had these two children and I just couldn’t afford to keep them. Of course little children need their mothers but now women have choices and they can choose not to have children. “I can see that now but I didn’t see it at the time. “It was a terrible thing I did,” she says. She is often misquoted about this, and people like to say she was a bad or uncaring mother. In 2005 she gave an interview to the Lucy Cavendish of The Evening Standard (London, England) in which she reflected on the untenable situation in which she found herself at that time. Lessing fled to London to pursue her writing career and communist beliefs, leaving two toddlers with their father in South Africa (another, Peter, from her second marriage, went with her). In “ African Laughter” (1992), she wrote: “You cannot be forbidden the land you grew up in, so says the web of sensations, memories, experience, that binds you to the landscape.” Lessing on motherhood The country was no longer as she remembered it. For a white African like Lessing, exile from her homeland was a particularly painful thing, and even when she returned to Zimbabwe decades later, she said that she felt she had lost something of importance. For most of her career, Lessing expressed the politics of disavowal – meaning she circumvented (bypassed, ignored) any explicit reference to the politics that caused her exile. Growing up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, like other Southern African people, she could not have avoided having a legacy of political awarenesses, agendas and convictions that dominated other concerns – like winning literary awards. Though Lessing has not in many years been an advocate for specific change, her work has always had political messages, explicit in the beginning, later in life more catholic, perhaps more resigned. Her work had always been political, and considering her background, it couldn’t have been anything else. Writing as a struggle activistįor those of you who think she was rather ungracious in her response, remember that Lessing was, originally, a “struggle activist”. Her final book, “Alfred and Emily”, appeared in 2008.
In a 2008 interview for the BBC’s Front Row, she stated that increased media interest after the award had left her without time or energy for writing. It’s a royal flush.” She titled her Nobel Lecture “On Not Winning the Nobel Prize” and used it to draw attention to global inequality of opportunity, and to explore changing attitudes to storytelling and literature. She was out shopping for groceries when the announcement came, arriving home to tell reporters who had gathered there, “Oh Christ! I couldn’t care less.” “I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I’m delighted to win them all. She received the prize at the age of 88 years and 52 days, making her the oldest winner of the literature prize at the time of the award and the third-oldest Nobel Laureate in any category. Luckily for her, and Alice Munro, they were honoured during their lifetimes. However, while Munro accepted the award with grace and talked about her love of writing, Lessing was infamously curmudgeonly about it. Doris Lessing, the Zimbabwean-raised author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, died on 17 November 2013.