Doris Lessing (1919–2013) was born from British parents (Alfred and Emily Tayler) in Iran and they moved five years later so she spent her childhood in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where her father barely earned a living on his farm. She didn’t get on well with her mother who seemed to prefer her brother. Her parents had met during WWI and were deeply affected by its consequences, especially her father. As a child she was disturbed and very sensitive with poor health due to the climate conditions yet she enjoyed a total freedom which allowed her to develop her creativity. She started writing stories during her teenage years while she was working odd jobs; she never went to university but was self-educated instead.
In 1937 she married, soon had two children and left her husband and children in 1943. She became involved in politics and sociology, she joined the Left Book Club and met her second husband with whom she had a son. But again she divorced after six years and went to England for the first time in 1949 with her first novel The Grass Is Singing published in 1950. It was an immediate success. Thereafter she pursued her writing career and expressed her opposition to nuclear arms, racism, apartheid, she was associated to communism but she left the communist party after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.
Doris Lessing felt deeply concerned with the conditions of women but she rejected feminist views against men. She wrote a lot about Africa as she was marked by her childhood souvenirs. Colonialism was also a focus of interest, she considered Africa was her heritage as she grew up there. She denounced violence and praised a wider consciousness for greater harmony throughout the planet. Her message to the reader implied that humans should change the way they consider themselves and the way they interact with each other for a better future.
She was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007 at age 88 for her considerable work consisting of around fifty novels, short stories, autobiographies, dramas and poems. Her most famous works are The Golden Notebook, The Children Of Violence, The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child.
Health : la santé
Odd jobs : des petits boulots
Thereafter : par la suite
To praise : faire l’éloge de
