Doris Lessing

Fra Morgenbladet 5. november 1951: «Det kom en bok i England i mai i fjor som vakte betydelig oppsikt. For det første var den skrevet av en helt ukjent utlending, en stenografdame fra Syd-Afrika, og for det annet behandlet den så oppriktig og avslørende kampforholdet mellom de hvite og sorte i Syd-Afrika at man stusset. I løpet av 3 måneder måtte forlaget trykke 5 opplag. Det forteller litt om bokens mottagelse.» Den ukjente utlendingen var Doris Lessing (f. 1919), og boken var Det synger i gresset. Temaet for denne debutromanen var så ømtålig at hun flyttet til Storbritannia for å finne et forlag som ville gi den ut. Også der vakte den stor oppsikt, og ble etter hvert oversatt til en rekke språk. I Norge kom den ut i 1951. Dette er historien om en hvit kvinne som fra et sorgløst, tomt byliv havner i et håpløst ekteskap med en farmer, en av de «fattige hvite» i det som nå er Zimbabwe. Hun går langsomt til grunne, og etter hvert hater hun livet på farmen og menneskene som omgir henne. Desillusjonert involverer hun seg med en av de fargede arbeiderne på farmen, og maktkampen som utspiller seg dem imellom, illustrerer de sterke motsetningene som har preget det sørlige Afrika helt frem til vår egen samtid. Mer enn et halvt århundre etter denne debuten, og et imponerende rikt forfatterskap senere, blir Lessing i 2007 tildelt Nobelprisen i litteratur.Sagt om Det synger i gresset: «Her er det lidenskap, omhyggelig presisjon og en sjelden sensitivitet ...» – New York Times «Følsom harmoni og kraftfullhet ... blant hennes beste arbeider.» – New York Review of Books«Hennes imponerende debutroman er fortalt med all den intensitet og innlevelse som kjennetegner Lessings forfatterskap.» – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Long considered Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing's best collection of short stories, African Stories--a central book in the work of a truly beloved writer--is now back in print. This beautiful collection is an homage to her twenty-five years spent in Africa and a brilliant portrait of African life. This is Doris Lessing's Africa--where she lived for twenty-five years and where so much of her interest and concern still resides. Here in these stories, Lessing explores the complexities, the agonies and joys, and the textures of life in Africa. First published in 1965, and out of print since the 1990s, this collection contains much of Ms. Lessing's most extraordinary work. It is a brilliant portrait of a world that is vital to all of us--perceived by an artist of the first rank writing with passion and honesty about her native land. African Stories includes every story Doris Lessing has written about Africa: all of her first collection, This Was the Old Chief's Country; the four tales about Africa from Five; the African stories from The Habit of Loving and A Man and Two Women; and four stories featured only in this edition. African Stories represents some of Doris Lessing's best work--and is an essential book by one of the twentieth century's most important authors.

Anglijskaja pisatelnitsa i dramaturg Doris Lessing vkhodit v chislo naibolee vydajuschikhsja sovremennykh avtorov, ona laureat Nobelevskoj premii po literature (2007) i mnozhestva drugikh prestizhnykh mezhdunarodnykh nagrad, v chisle kotorykh britanskie premii Devida...

Doris Lessing - odna iz naibolee vydajuschikhsja pisatelnits sovremennosti, laureat mnozhestva prestizhnykh mezhdunarodnykh nagrad. Tvorchestvo Lessing voistinu mnogogranno, sredi ee sochinenij proizvedenija, prinadlezhaschie k samym raznym zhanram: ot...

"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York TimesShocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing's unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.Roz and Lil have been best friends since childhood. But their bond stretches beyond familiar bounds when these middle-aged mothers fall in love with each other's teenage sons--taboo-shattering passions that last for years, until the women end them, vowing to have a respectable old age.

The landmark novel of the Sixties â?? a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal.

A group of squatters rebel against Mrs Thatcher and erupt into violence in this politicised novel from the author of â??The Golden Notebookâ??.

The Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessingâ??s first novel is a taut and tragic portrayal of a crumbling marriage, set in South Africa during the years of Arpartheid.

In this ambitious novel of madness and release, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Doris Lessing imagines the fantastical "inner-space" life of an amnesiac.Charles Watkins, a Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, has suffered a breakdown, confined to a mental hospital as his friends and doctors attempt to bring him back to reality. But Watkins has embarked on a tremendous pyschological adventure that takes him from a spinning raft in the Atlantic to a ruined stone city on a tropical island to an outer-space journey through singing planets. As he travels in his mind through memory and the farther reaches of imagination, his doctors try to subdue him with ever more powerful drugs in a competition for his soul. In this provocative novel, Lessing takes us on a harrowing voyage into the rarely glimpsed territory of the inner mind.

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing's classic novel of the pivotal summer in one woman's life is a brilliant excursion into the terrifying gulf between youth and old age. As the summer begins, Kate Brown--attractive, intelligent, forty-five, happily married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children--has no reason to expect that anything will change. But by summer's end the woman she was--living behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caring--no longer exists. The Summer Before the Dark takes us along on Kate's journey: from London to Turkey to Spain, from husband to lover to madness, on the road to a frightening new independence and a confrontation with herself that lets her finally and truly come of age.

(Eloon jääneen muistelmat) Lähitulevaisuuden megapoliksessa nainen, joka yrittää itsekin jäädä eloon ja selvitä terrorismin ja sotaisten joukkojen keskellä, saa kasvattaakseen murrosikäisen tytön. Teosta pidetään Lessingin autobiografiana.

A collection of charming and celebrated writings about cats, from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Doris Lessing’s love affair with cats began at a young age, when she became intrigued with the semi-feral creatures on the African farm where she grew up. Her fascination remained undiminished by the handsome domesticated creatures who shared her flats and her life in London and grew into real love with El Magnifico, the awkwardly lovable cat who in his later years suffered the great indignity of becoming a three-legged beast. Consisting of Lessing’s celebrated collection of stories, ‘Particularly Cats and Rufus’, and the poignant though unsentimental memoir, ‘The Old Age of El Magnifico’, this book is a brilliant evocation of the feline world.

"The Golden Notebook is Doris Lessing's most important work and has left its mark upon the ideas and feelings of a whole generation of women." -- New York Times Book ReviewAnna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.

"There is passion here, a piercing accuracy, a rare sensitivity and power. . . . One can only marvel." -- New York TimesSet in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm works its slow poison. Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic black servant. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses--master and slave--are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion, until their psychic tension explodes with devastating consequences.

In contemporary London, a loose-knit group of political vagabonds drifts from one cause to the next, picketing and strategizing for hypothetical situations. But within this world, one particular small commune is moving inexorably toward active terrorism. At its center is Alice Mellings, a brilliant organizer who knows how to cope with almost anything, except the vacuum of her own life. Always reliable, she makes herself indispensable to the commune, earning a precious sense of belonging by denying her own sense of self. But now, suddenly, the stakes are rising. Some in the group appear to have ties to insurgents in Northern Ireland and even to Soviets who are "recruiting." A small bomb set off on a deserted street leads to ideas that are dangerously ambitious, and there is a "professional" who is eager to meet with Alice and discuss her future with his organization.

The Good Terrorist follows Alice Mellings, a woman who transforms her home into a headquarters for a group of radicals who plan to join the IRA. As Alice struggles to bridge her ideology and her bourgeois upbringing, her companions encounter unexpected challenges in their quest to incite social change against complacency and capitalism. With a nuanced sense of the intersections between the personal and the political, Nobel laureate Doris Lessing creates in The Good Terrorist a compelling portrait of domesticity and rebellion.

Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, invites us to imagine a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society free from men. An old Roman senator embarks on what may be his last endeavour: the retelling of the story of human creation. He recounts the history of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic, coastal wilderness, in the valley of an overshadowing mountain. The Clefts have no need, or knowledge, of men – childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and their children are always female. But with the birth of a strange, new child – a boy – the harmony of their community is thrown into jeopardy. At first, the Clefts are awestruck by this seemingly malformed child, but as more and more of these threateningly unfamiliar males appear, they are rejected, and are exposed on the nearby mountainside, sacrificed to the patrolling eagles overhead. Unbeknownst to the Clefts, however, these baby males survive, aided by the eagles, and thrive on the other side of the mountain. It is not until a curious young Cleft named Maire goes beyond the geographical, and emotional, divide of the mountain that this disquieting fact is uncovered – forcing the Clefts to accept the prospect of a now shared world, and the possible vengeance of the wronged males. In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts head-on the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women, two similar and yet thoroughly distinct creatures, manage to live side by side in the world, and how the specifics of gender affect every aspect of our existence.

From Doris Lessing, "one of the most important writers of the past hundred years" (Times of London), comes a brilliant, darkly provocative alternative history of humankind's beginnings.In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the world and how the troublesome particulars of gender affect every aspect of our existence.In the last years of his life, a Roman senator retells the history of human creation and reveals the little-known story of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic coastal wilderness. The Clefts have neither need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child--a boy--the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.

Vuoden 2007 nobelistin ravisteleva romaani englantilaisesta kaupungista katastrofin jälkeen ja hitaasti viriävästä uuden alun toivosta Ihmiset pakenevat sankoin joukoin maaseudulle, sillä ruuasta ja vedestä on pulaa. Autioituvassa kaupungissa asuu nainen, joka äkkiä saa huollettavakseen nuoren tytön. Yhteiskuntajärjestelmä kulkee kivuliaasti kohti kuolemaansa, ja yhtä suurella tuskalla tyttö tekee kodin seinien sisäpuolella ikiaikaista sisäistä matkaansa - kasvaa naiseksi. "Lessingin kerronta vetoaa älyyn ja tunteeseen. Eloonjääneen muistelmat tehoaa ja jää kummasti askarruttamaan mieltä." - Helsingin Sanomat

Dann is now all grown up and is traveling with a snow dog, hunting for knowledge and grappling with despair, while Mara's daughter and Griot embark on a strange adventure, discovering that love and song can bring happiness, in the sequel to Mara and Dann. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.