Memorable books by Dorris Lessing
"Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want if they're telling the truth."
In the highly mechanized and fast-paced times we live in, where we constantly crave human touch, these lines by British-Zimbabwean novelist Doris Lessing stand blatantly true. Hardly did she know at that time that one day her books will be read all over the world. Today, on her 102nd birth anniversary, here are some must-read books by Dorris Lessing.
The Grass is Singing (1950)
Set in Rhodesia, it tells the story of Dick Turner, a failed white farmer and his wife, Mary, a town girl who viciously abuses the black South Africans who work on their farm. But after many years, trapped by poverty, sapped by the heat of their tiny house, the lonely and frightened Mary turns to Moses, the black cook, for kindness and understanding.
Pic credit: Fourth Estate
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Widely regarded as Lessing’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, ‘The Golden Notebook’ centers on novelist Anna Wulf who struggles with writer’s block. Divorced with a young child, and fearful of going mad, Anna records her experiences in four coloured notebooks: black for her writing life, red for political views, yellow for emotions, blue for everyday events. But it is a fifth notebook – the golden notebook – that finally pulls these strands of her life together.
Pic credit: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Shikasta (1979)
This is the first volume in the series of novels Lessing calls collectively 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'. Presented as a compilation of documents, reports, letters, speeches and journal entries, this is a general study of the planet Shikasta–clearly the planet Earth–to be used by history students of the higher planet Canopus and to be stored in the Canopian archives.
Pic credit: Vintage
The Good Terrorist (1985)
A political novel, its protagonist is the naive tramp Alice, who squats with a group of radicals in London and is drawn into their terrorist activities.
Pic credit: Fourth Estate
Time Bites (2005)
It is a selection of the very best of Lessing's essays: articles on writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and Mikael Bulgakov. It also includes adoring and adorable pieces on the beloved cats that she has allowed to share her life, and insightful looks at the Africa in which she grew up, and London and England, the place where she made her home.
Pic credit: Harper Perennial
Alfred and Emily (2008)
Lessing’s final book, 'Alfred and Emily' explores the lives of her parents, both of whom were irrevocably damaged by the First World War. To tell the story, she pairs the real account of their experiences with an imagined counter-history of what their lives might have been if the war had never happened.
Pic credit: Harper Perennial