Hello Gentle Reader
Doris Lessing is best known for her novel “The Golden Notebook.” A novel that’s impact on the women’s liberation movement is still discussed. However Ms. Lessing herself had called the novel an albatross. As it was adopted and waved around by feminists, as an icon of what it means to be a woman. The novel itself dealt with many subjects that at the time were considered taboo. Subjects like menstrual cycles, orgasms, and other parts of the female body, that many would find unflattering or to frank to discuss. Doris Lessing however, lived an exciting life; one that can be traced in her novels. Born in Persia, her family and she eventually moved to Rhodesia (now Iran and Zimbabwe). Lessing’s childhood was marked and overshadowed by The Great War (World War I) something that Lessing herself had dealt with in her last published novel “Alfred & Emily.” Throughout her life Lessing saw histories lack of compassion. She witnessed World War II, and in her younger ideal days was a member of the communist party. Something that Lessing scoffed at in her later years. Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in two-thousand and seven. Her reaction to the award was seen by many as classic Lessing: scathing, sarcastic and brutally honest. However Lessing was happy that she won the Nobel, though she was confused by it at the same time. She had heard in the nineteen-sixties – the years that Lessing writing career was cemented; that the Swedish Academy did not like her. When she received the prize, she was confused in the sudden change in the Academy attitude towards her. Lessing to date has been the oldest Laureate in Literature, when announced she was eighty-eight years old – she has no passed away at ninety-four years old.
Rest in Peace Doris Lessing, and may your work continue to thrive and expand with new readers. She is the last great writer of the twentieth century. One that experienced firsthand, the collapse of the empires, saw the tragedies of a second world war, and whose childhood was marked by the first. Lessing saw the rise of communism; the fall of communism; women’s freedom movement, and the civil rights movement. Throughout it all Lessing has been a chronicler of her time.
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Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
