Lessing, Doris

Doris Lessing, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2007, is an English female novelist of the post-World War II period; her prolific and varied literary career, however, extends into the first decade of the 21st century with the publication of such recent novels as The Cleft (2007) and Alfred and Emily (2008).

Doris Lessing's status as a feminist writer is as much unsolicited as inescapable. In spite of her attempt to drown her literary voice in the major political and communal issues of her age, thus instinctively shying away from a stereotyped feminine sensibility, many of her novels are today celebrated as feminist manifestos, deep psychic insights into the contemporary feminine self in both white colonial and metropolitan societies. Doris Lessing ...