Oct 11 2007

Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

AP:

English writer Doris Lessing, who ended her formal schooling at age 13 and went on to write novels that explored relationships between women and society and interracial dynamics, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. Lessing, who turns 88 in just over a week, was born to British parents who were living in what at the time was Persia. The family later moved to what is now Zimbabwe, where she spent her childhood and adolescent years.

She made her debut with “The Grass Is Singing” in 1950. Her other works include the semiautobiographical “Children Of Violence” series, set in Africa and England. . . .

Her breakthrough was “The Golden Notebook,” in 1962, the Swedish Academy said.

“The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that inform the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship,” the academy said in its citation announcing the prize.

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  2. Yippppeeeeeeee!  Terrific things still happen, though seemingly not as often as I would like right now.  This is a wonderful gift today for women all over the world and all that that entails. Since we all got here via a woman I guess that would mean all of us 😉

  3. This excerpt from The Memoirs of A Survivor is timeless:

    June, returning with Emily to my flat one day, about a fortnight after her induction into womanhood –I put it like that because this was how she obviously felt it– had changed physically, and in every way. Her experience had marked her face, which was even more defenceless, in her sad-waif style, than before. And she looked older than Emily. Her body still had the flat thickness through the waist of a child, her breasts had fattened without shaping. Anxiety, or love, had made her eat enough to put on weight. We saw her, that eleven-year-old, as she would look as a middle-aged woman: the thick working body, the face that accommodated, that always seemed able to accommodate, two opposing qualities –the victim’s patient helplessness, the sharp inquisitiveness of the user. [1974: 152-153]

    • pico on October 11, 2007 at 17:21
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    Nobel Prize goes to an Iranian born novelist who was repeatedly on the U.S.’s shit list, unable to enter the country because we were too suspicious of her ideas.

    I love you, Swedish Academy!

    • Armando on October 11, 2007 at 17:25
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    I did read “The Golden Notebook” in my freshman English Lit class.

    The section I chose was about Women novelists.

    As I recall the reading list, It included Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, one of the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Margaret Atwood, Lessing and a couple of others I simply do not recall right now.

    I do admit to not being a great hand at literature. I like what I like. For instance, like everyone in the world, Jane Austen. Persuasion is my favorite.

    • fatdave on October 12, 2007 at 01:57
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    Mrs fd came home grinning like a Cheshire cat. It had made her happy, so I reckon I will.

    Justin Cartwright said on Newsnight tonight that he had asked her ( bearing in mind the serious politics of her books) what they (novelists) were here for. She told him they were here to “cheer the buggers up”.

    http://news.bbc.co.u…

    There is a link to tonight’s prog here – ( It only lasts for 24 hours after broadcast and I don’t know if it will work in the States. You need to click “Tonight’s prog and the piece and interview with her by Kirsty Wark are about spot on halfway through. Interesting piece afterward on Bolivia.)

  7. My favorite Lessing work is the science fiction quintology:  CANOPUS IN ARGOS ARCHIVES.
    If 5 volumes seems too daunting, try the 1st,  “Shikasta.”  I think some of you will be delighted.

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