Doris Lessing





Doris Lessing

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born
October 22, 1919 in Kermanshah, Iran

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influences
Idries Shah, Olive Schreiner, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Dostoevsky,...more


About this author

Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining...more


Average rating: 3.56 · 40,561 ratings · 3,409 reviews · 166 distinct works
The Golden Notebook: Perenn...
3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 avg rating — 4,528 ratings — published 1962 — 39 editions
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The Fifth Child
3.48 of 5 stars 3.48 avg rating — 2,815 ratings — published 1985 — 40 editions
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The Grass is Singing
3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 avg rating — 1,885 ratings — published 1950 — 35 editions
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The Good Terrorist
3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 775 ratings — published 1985 — 25 editions
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The Memoirs of a Survivor
3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 avg rating — 732 ratings — published 1974 — 22 editions
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Martha Quest
3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 627 ratings — published 1962 — 21 editions
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The Cleft
2.78 of 5 stars 2.78 avg rating — 916 ratings — published 2007 — 18 editions
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Briefing for a Descent Into...
3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 avg rating — 527 ratings — published 1971 — 13 editions
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Mara and Dann
3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 461 ratings — published 1998 — 14 editions
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Shikasta
3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 553 ratings — published 1979 — 12 editions
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More books by Doris Lessing…
Martha Quest A Proper Marriage A Ripple From the Storm Landlocked The Four-Gated City
Children of Violence (5 books)
by
3.9212903225806452 of 5 stars 3.92 avg rating — 1,550 ratings
Shikasta The Marriages Between Zones... The Sirian Experiments The Making Of The Represent... The Sentimental Agents in t...
Canopus in Argos (5 books)
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3.86734693877551 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 1,470 ratings

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“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. ”
Doris Lessing

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
Doris Lessing

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics posts views last activity  
Bright Young Things: The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing - February 2010 (Spoilers Likely) 12 94 Feb 17, 2010 01:13pm  
Chicks On Lit: A to Z world wide travel through books. 47 88 Mar 24, 2010 12:00pm  
Every one's Choice: A Tie for April 57 40 Apr 02, 2010 11:55pm  
Book lovers : A-Z Challenge 72 163 Apr 15, 2010 04:27am  
The Sword and Laser: Books to avoid 38 199 Apr 30, 2010 11:30am  
Radical Readers &...: Reading Challenge? 11 9 Jul 19, 2010 05:00am  
The Book Challenge: Kuutar's challenges for 2010 24 47 Aug 31, 2010 09:33am  
South African Boo...: 2010 A-Z Author Challenge 11 64 Sep 15, 2010 08:48am  
Knight-Reading: Reading Log Week of 9/27/10 3 12 Oct 03, 2010 08:48pm  


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