Book description
Assembled here for the first time in book form are the very best of
several decades' worth of occasional writings from perhaps the
best-loved and most-admired of Britain's great female writers
A selection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays, never before
collected together and published in book form. Articles on writers as
diverse as Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence,
Mikael Bulgakov sit alongside autobiographical looks at the beliefs that
have shaped Lessing's thinking. There are adoring and adorable pieces on
the beloved cats that she has allowed to share her life and insightful
looks at the Africa in which she grew up and London and England, the
place where she made her home.
The range of subjects, cultures and periods within these essays is huge
but the collection is utterly consistent in one key regard: Doris
Lessing's clear-eyed vision and clearly-expressed prose are present
throughout. There is a huge amount of wisdom and entertainment in these
pages, and fans of Doris' infectiously forthright, zestful and impish
spirit will love to own and read this book. 'Doris Lessing has changed
the way we think about the world.' Blake Morrison
'Thank goodness for Doris Lessing. While the rest of us flounder about
noisily in the muddy waters of life, she never fails to expose with
startling clarity the essential folly of our dreams and good
intentions.' Kate Chisholm, Evening Standard
'She's up there in the pantheon with Balzac and George Eliot. We're
lucky she's still writing.' Lisa Appignanesi, Independent
'She has an extraordinary feeling for the peculiar vulnerabilities of
the young and the elderly. And her portraits of human relationships are
of quite staggering beauty.' Ruth Scurr, The Times Doris Lessing was
the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature and is one of the most
important writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Her first
novel, 'The Grass is Singing' was published in 1950, and since then her
international reputation has flourished. Among her other celebrated
novels are 'The Golden Notebook', 'The Summer Before the Dark', and
'Memoirs of a Survivor'. Her most recent works include two volumes of
autobiography, 'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the Shade', her most
recent novel is 'The Cleft'.
