Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”. She wrote provocative, inventive and influential works, ranging from novels, short stories and science fiction to autobiography, drama, poetry, essays and operas.
Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950, and her international reputation has flourished since then. Among her other celebrated novels are The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark and Memoirs of a Survivor. She also published two volumes of autobiography, Under my Skin (which received the James Tait Black Prize) and Walking in the Shade. Her later publications include the novels The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog and The Cleft, and Time Bites, a collection of essays.
Her collection of short novels, Five, earned her the Somerset Maugham Award in 1954. The French translation of The Golden Notebook (1962) won the Prix Medici in 1976. In 1982 she received the Austrian State Prize for Literature and the Shakespeare Prize, Hamburg. Doris Lessing has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times: Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Sirian Experiments (1981) and The Good Terrorist (1985) and won the WH Smith Award in 1985. In August 1991, she received an honorary title of Distinguished Fellow in Literature in the School of English and American Studies conferred by University of East Anglia. In 2001 she was awarded the Spanish Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, the David Cohen British Literature Prize and received a Companion of Honour from the Royal Society for Literature. She was recently short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize and received S. T. Dupont Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature.
She died in 2013.
Books by Doris Lessing
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Winter in July
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Doris Lessing Three-Book Edition: The Golden Notebook, The Grass is Singing, The Good Terrorist
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Three-Book Edition: The Golden Notebook, The Grass is Singing, The Good Terrorist
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London Observed
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The Memoirs of a Survivor
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The Sweetest Dream
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Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949 -1962 (Text Only)
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Landlocked
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An Old Woman and Her Cat
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Report on the Threatened City
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The Day Stalin Died
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The Old Chief Mshlanga
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Through The Tunnel
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To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One
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Play With a Tiger and Other Plays
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The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two
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The Good Terrorist
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The Grass is Singing
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The Golden Notebook
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The Summer Before the Dark
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Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
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Mara and Dann
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The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 4)
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The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog
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The Diaries of Jane Somers
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African Laughter
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The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5 (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 2)
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A Ripple from the Storm
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The Sirian Experiments (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 3)
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In Pursuit of the English
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The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 5)
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Shikasta (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 1)
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The Four-Gated City
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A Proper Marriage
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The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two
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This Was the Old Chief’s Country: Collected African Stories Volume One
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Martha Quest
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On Cats
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The Grandmothers
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Ben, in the World
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The Grass is Singing
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The Fifth Child
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The Good Terrorist
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Love, Again
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The Golden Notebook
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Alfred and Emily
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Time Bites: Views and Reviews
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On Cats
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The Cleft
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Alfred and Emily
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Alfred and Emily
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The Cleft
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The Golden Notebook
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The Good Terrorist
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The Cleft
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The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog
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Time Bites
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The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog
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The Grandmothers
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Time Bites: Views and Reviews
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Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949–1962
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Playing the Game
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Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949
Paperback