The 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Dorris Lessing for her deep autobiographical writing that has swept across continents reflecting her engagements with the social and political issues of her time. The Swedish Academy has described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism,fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” The award comes with about $1.6 million.
Miss Lessing was born in Persia and never completed her high school. She largely educated herself through voracious reading. She has written dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays,nonfiction and two volumes of autobiography. Her name was on the shortlist for a long time that she had almost forgotten about it and had given up the hope of becoming a Nobel Laureate. She became quite noted with her breakthrough novel, “ The Golden Notebook”. The growing feminist movement saw this book as a pioneering work and which belonged to that category of books that informed the 20th century view of the male-female relationship. Ms.Lessing wrote about the inner lives of women and rejected the notion that they should give up their choice and lifestyle for marriage or children.
“The Golden Notebook”, tracked the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wished to live freely and in some ways was Ms Lessing’s alter ego.
Ms Lessing was born Doris May Taylor in 1919 in what is now Iran. After a painful childhood in Zimbabwe, she moved to Southern Rhodesia. She published her first novel in 1949, in Britain, “The Grass Is Singing” which recorded the relationship between a white farmer’s wife and her black servant.
Her childhood experiences drawn from the cultural differences and the racial discrimination among the whites and the blacks in colonial Rhodesia formed the basis for her first novel. “The Golden Notebook” had only sold around 6,000 copies when it came into the market but they had galvanized the American female society to a great extent. Ms. Lessing’s other novels include “The Good Terrorist”,“Martha Quest” and “The Cleft”. She even dabbled in science fiction and some of her later works show her interest in Sufi mysticism,which according to her stresses a link between the fates of individuals and the society.