Doris Lessing: The British Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature

- The Swedish Academy called her, "that epicist for the female experience who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. " They described, The Golden Notebook, as "Lessing's real breakthrough. The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship."
_____________

by Essam Farag

(April 19, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919 to British parents. Her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. Today, Doris Lessing lives in north London. She married and divorced twice in her lifetime, the first time at 19, and has three children. Lessing became a committed Communist and fervent political activist.

Lessing is the 11th female winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, since the creation of the prize in 1901. The Swedish Academy announced in October, that it would give the 2007 prize to the 88-years-old author, whose first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published almost six decades ago. Lessing has more than 50 works to her credit, including novels, short stories, plays, essays (including Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, delivered originally in Canada as the 1985 Massey Lecture), a two-volume autobiography, novellas, memoirs, and travel sketches.

The Swedish Academy called her, "that epicist for the female experience who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. " They described, The Golden Notebook, as "Lessing's real breakthrough. The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship." Some mentioned that Lessing's works of the past 5-10 years have been less well-received. It is largely been a continuation of the fantasy and science-fiction themes that she started to mime in the late-1970s, with her Canopus in Argos series.

Dr. Harold Bloom, of Yale University, was quick to condemn the Swedish Academy's decision. He called her win, "pure political correctness. Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable. And this work is fourth rate science-fiction." To this coveted prize there were many competitors, including Amos Oz, Tomas Transtromer, Philip Roth, and Haruki Marukami.

(Essam Farag, BA Honours (Dalhousie), MA (Guelph) is the Production Editor of the Ambassadors Magazine. Email: essamfarag@ambassadors.net.)

- Sri Lanka Guardian