Martin Cleaver/Associated Press

Doris Lessing, the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, described by Irving Howe as “the archaeologist of human relations,” and by the Swedish Academy as an “epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny,” was 88 when she won the award.

Born: 22 October 1919
Birthplace: Kermanshah, Iran

She is often called a feminist, although she denied being a feminism, and she wrote against communism, although she was once a communist.

Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing grew up in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) and spoke out against its racist white minority government until she was finally exiled from the country, not to return until after it won its independence in 1980.

THURSDAY MAY 5, 1994 On The Commanding Self by Idries Shah (Re-printed from The London Times)

THE TIMES

Doris Lessing pays tribute to a great exponent of Sufism

Thirty years ago there appeared The Sufis, a book which at once announced itself as unlike any other. Hundreds of books by non-Sufis appear every year, disappear without trace or wash up on obscure shelves in academic libraries. This book was at once "recognised" -- a Sufi term which may be summed up by "like calls to like" -- by a remarkable range of people, many of them poets. The Sufis is a classic, and was by Idries Shah, who represents a genuine mystic tradition -- there are many imitators.

Since then he has written or compiled over 30 books, providing a comprehensive experience of the Sufi view of life. The whole body of work, together with his reissuing of still relevant Sufi classics, adds up to a many-faceted whole. There are people who have taken part in this process, book by book. Others have found this or that book useful or entertaining. The Commanding Self is both a summing up of a third of a century's work, and a development. People who have stayed the course will find similar ideas here, but put into a new context or taken a step further, sometimes unexpectedly.

"The commanding self" is a Sufi term for the false personality. Their contention is that we are all products of ideas put into us by our parents, by our culture, by the time we live in, and that what is real in us is very small (and precious). It is this part the Sufis aim to reach and teach. Some people, hearing that nearly everything they seem to be is only a mask made by conditioning, will say, "Well, of course!" -- and want more information, while others may feel threatened. The picture on the cover is a photograph of an ancient figurine, a representation of the commanding self, like a savage dog. "Do you want to live an angry biting life?" A very old philosophy or way of looking at life has been openly introduced into a culture -- the West -- that has had little contact with it. Which is not to say that Sufism has not been at work in every country, this one too, sometimes secretly. What the Sufis offer is seen by them as a kind of yeast, or energising stream. All our associations with the word mysticism are wrong or limited. For instance, the word "Sufism" is a recent German coinage, and not used by Sufis. "Isms" are foreign to the nature of something felt as a process or a development. Ignorance causes bafflement. Highly educated people, hearing the word "mysticism," may say they have no time for table- turning, seances, gurus, whirling dervishes, ESP, encounter groups and so on. A familiarity with the ancient ideas behind mysticism has not been part of our curriculum. People who have had 20 years of our kind of education may suddenly fall victim to a charlatan or a cult: they are highly developed in one area but left ignorant and defenceless in others. Sufis say it took 800 years of preparatory work to get Islam to accept them: they take a long-term view of the human condition. Then Islam claimed the Sufis as its property, and in our reference books Sufism is defined as a mystical Islamic sect. This philosophy, or Way, antedates Islam; claims to be the inner part or essence of every religion, is not interested in labels or definitions, and is continually reappearing, openly or in a disguised form, in every culture. A new Sufi appearance is always within the terms of the host culture, is never an exotic, thrives, does its work, and dies, leaving behind "husks." It is these dead forms that litter every culture and they are what most people see first. Shah has said often that a main difficulty in teaching is to prevent the material from being made into a system, yet another rigid framework of ideas, or a cult. This will happen in due course: it always does. Meanwhile here is the real thing, alive and full of juice and energy. People tempted to sample this pretty astonishing phenomenon could not do better than try this book. They will find the word mysticism has lost its bizarre associations, and that the Way of the Sufi (the title of one of Shah's books) reveals itself as a sophisticated view of life, embodied in people who through the centuries have always been in advance of their time. Sufis claim that all kinds of notions we think of as Western achievements were part of Sufi knowledge long ago: evolution, for instance, or the power locked in the atom. Their sociological and psychological insights are far in advance of our current ideas. These are most skilled and versatile servants. I have been a student for three decades, and am continually being surprised by what I learn. I have found nothing as informed, subtle, comprehensive, perceptive, anywhere else. Sufi uses of literature are certainly full of surprises. For thousands of years the teaching story has been a Sufi instrument. "Their effects on the innermost part of the human mind is direct and certain." Teaching stories are not didactic, not parables -- a form some of us at least are still familiar with. Parables are open to a simple interpretation: this tale means this or means that. Being introduced to the great treasurehouse of Sufi literature taught this writer, at least, a realistic view of her talents. There are wonderful tales here, some long, some very short. An elephant and a mouse fell in love. On the wedding night the elephant keeled over and died. The mouse said, "Oh Fate! I have unknowingly bartered one moment of pleasure and tons of imagination for a life time of digging a grave." There is not a grain of sentimentality in this view of life. A tortoise carries a stranded scorpion across a river. The scorpion stings the tortoise who demands indignantly: "My nature is to be helpful. I have helped you and now you sting me." "My friend," says the scorpion, "your nature is to be helpful. Mine is to sting. Why do you seek to transform your nature into a virtue and mine into villainy?"

----------------------------

In ''Walking in the Shade,'' published in 1997, she still refers to Sufism as ''the main current in my life, deeper than any other, my real preoccupation.''

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Biography

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Taylor in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. 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). Doris's mother adapted to the rough life in the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a civilized, Edwardian life among savages; but her father did not, and the thousand-odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth.

Lessing has described her childhood as an uneven mix of some pleasure and much pain. The natural world, which she explored with her brother, Harry, was one retreat from an otherwise miserable existence. Her mother, obsessed with raising a proper daughter, enforced a rigid system of rules and hygiene at home, then installed Doris in a convent school, where nuns terrified their charges with stories of hell and damnation. Lessing was later sent to an all-girls high school in the capital of Salisbury, from which she soon dropped out. She was thirteen; and it was the end of her formal education.

But 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. She recently commented that unhappy childhoods seem to produce fiction writers. "Yes, I think that is true. Though it wasn't apparent to me then. Of course, I wasn't thinking in terms of being a writer then - I was just thinking about how to escape, all the time." The parcels of books ordered from London fed her imagination, laying out other worlds to escape into. Lessing's early reading included Dickens, Scott, Stevenson, Kipling; later she discovered D.H. Lawrence, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Bedtime stories also nurtured her youth: her mother told them to the children and Doris herself kept her younger brother awake, spinning out tales. Doris's early years were also spent absorbing her fathers bitter memories of World War I, taking them in as a kind of "poison." "We are all of us made by war," Lessing has written, "twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it."

In flight from her mother, Lessing left home when she was fifteen and took a job as a nursemaid. Her employer gave her books on politics and sociology to read, while his brother-in-law crept into her bed at night and gave her inept kisses. During that time she was, Lessing has written, "in a fever of erotic longing." Frustrated by her backward suitor, she indulged in elaborate romantic fantasies. She was also writing stories, and sold two to magazines in South Africa.

Lessing's life has been a challenge to her belief that people cannot resist the currents of their time, as she fought against the biological and cultural imperatives that fated her to sink without a murmur into marriage and motherhood. "There is a whole generation of women," she has said, speaking of her mother's era, "and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children. Most of them got pretty neurotic - because, I think, of the contrast between what they were taught at school they were capable of being and what actually happened to them." Lessing believes that she was freer than most people because she became a writer. For her, writing is a process of "setting at a distance," taking the "raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general."

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 in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

Lessing's fiction is deeply autobiographical, much of it emerging out of her experiences in Africa. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her serious engagement with politics and social concerns, Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. Her stories and novellas set in Africa, published during the fifties and early sixties, decry the dispossession of black Africans by white colonials, and expose the sterility of the white culture in southern Africa. In 1956, in response to Lessing's courageous outspokenness, she was declared a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

Over the years, Lessing has attempted to accommodate what she admires in the novels of the nineteenth century - their "climate of ethical judgement" - to the demands of twentieth-century ideas about consciousness and time. After writing the Children of Violence series (1951-1959), a formally conventional bildungsroman (novel of education) about the growth in consciousness of her heroine, Martha Quest, Lessing broke new ground with The Golden Notebook (1962), a daring narrative experiment, in which the multiple selves of a contemporary woman are rendered in astonishing depth and detail. Anna Wulf, like Lessing herself, strives for ruthless honesty as she aims to free herself from the chaos, emotional numbness, and hypocrisy afflicting her generation.

Attacked for being "unfeminine" in her depiction of female anger and aggression, Lessing responded, "Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise." As at least one early critic noticed, Anna Wulf "tries to live with the freedom of a man" - a point Lessing seems to confirm: "These attitudes in male writers were taken for granted, accepted as sound philosophical bases, as quite normal, certainly not as woman-hating, aggressive, or neurotic."

In the 1970s and 1980s, Lessing began to explore more fully the quasi-mystical insight Anna Wulf seems to reach by the end of The Golden Notebook. Her "inner-space fiction" deals with cosmic fantasies (Briefing for a Descent into Hell, 1971), dreamscapes and other dimensions (Memoirs of a Survivor, 1974), and science fiction probings of higher planes of existence (Canopus in Argos: Archives, 1979-1983). These reflect Lessing's interest, since the 1960s, in Idries Shah, whose writings on Sufi mysticism stress the evolution of consciousness and the belief that individual liberation can come about only if people understand the link between their own fates and the fate of society.

Lessing's other novels include The Good Terrorist (1985) and The Fifth Child (1988); she also published two novels under the pseudonym Jane Somers (The Diary of a Good Neighbour, 1983 and If the Old Could..., 1984). In addition, she has written several nonfiction works, including books about cats, a love since childhood. Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 appeared in 1995 and received the James Tait Black Prize for best biography.

Addenda (by Jan Hanford)

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

She collaborated with illustrator Charlie Adlard to create the unique and unusual graphic novel, Playing the Game. After being out of print in the U.S. for more than 30 years, Going Home and In Pursuit of the English were republished by HarperCollins in 1996. These two fascinating and important books give rare insight into Mrs. Lessing's personality, life and views.

In 1996, her first novel in 7 years, Love Again, was published by HarperCollins. She did not make any personal appearances to promote the book. In an interview, she describes the frustration she felt during a 14-week worldwide tour to promote her autobiography: "I told my publishers it would be far more useful for everyone if I stayed at home, writing another book. But they wouldn't listen. This time round I stamped my little foot and said I would not move from my house and would do only one interview." And the honors keep on coming: she was on the list of nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature and Britain's Writer's Guild Award for Fiction in 1996.

Late in the year, HarperCollins published Play with A Tiger and Other Plays, a compilation of 3 of her plays: Play with a Tiger, The Singing Door and Each His Own Wilderness. In an unexplained move, HarperCollins only published this volume in the U.K. and it is not available in the U.S., to the disappointment of her North American readers.

In 1997 she collaborated with Philip Glass for the second time, providing the libretto for the opera "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" which premiered in Heidelberg, Germany in May. Walking in the Shade, the anxiously awaited second volume of her autobiography, was published in October and was nominated for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography/autobiography category. This volume documents her arrival in England in 1949 and takes us up to the publication of The Golden Notebook. This is the final volume of her autobiography, she will not be writing a third volume.

Her new novel, titled "Mara and Dann", was been published in the U.S in January 1999 and in the U.K. in April 1999. In an interview in the London Daily Telegraph she said, "I adore writing it. I'll be so sad when it's finished. It's freed my mind." 1999 also saw her first experience on-line, with a chat at Barnes & Noble (transcript). In May 1999 she will be presented with the XI Annual International Catalunya Award, an award by the government of Catalunya.

December 31 1999: In the U.K.'s last Honours List before the new Millennium, Doris Lessing was appointed a Companion of Honour, an exclusive order for those who have done "conspicuous national service." She revealed she had turned down the offer of becoming a Dame of the British Empire because there is no British Empire. Being a Companion of Honour, she explained, means "you're not called anything - and it's not demanding. I like that". Being a Dame was "a bit pantomimey". The list was selected by the Labor Party government to honor people in all walks of life for their contributions to their professions and to charity. It was officially bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II.

In January, 2000 the National Portrait Gallery in London unveiled Leonard McComb's portrait of Doris Lessing.

Ben, in the World, the sequel to The Fifth Child was published in Spring 2000 (U.K.) and Summer 2000 (U.S.). Another new novel is planned for next year.

Bibliography

1948

The short story The Pig published in TREK 12, April 1948
The short story Flight published in TREK 12 , September 1948

1948

The Pig (short story) and Flight (short story), publshed in TREK, 12 (April 1948)

1949

The short story Under My Hand published in TREK 13 , February 1949
The short story Fruit From Ashes published in TREK13 , October 1949

1950

The Grass Is Singing
The Nuissance (short story) published in Towards the Sun: A Miscellany of Southern Africa, edited by Roy Macnab. London: Collins.

1951

This Was the Old Chief's Country

1952

Martha Quest, the first volume of Children of Violence

1953

Five: Short Novels
Before the Deluge (play) later called Mr. Dolinger (1958).

1954

A Proper Marriage, the second volume of Children of Violence
Received Somerset Maugham Award of the Society of Authors for Five: Short Novels.
A Road to the Big City (short story), Pick of Today's Short Stories 5.

1955

A Mild Attack of Locusts (short story), published in the New Yorker, February 26, 1955.
Through The Tunnel (short story), published in the New Yorker, August 6, 1955.

1956

Retreat to Innocence
Myself As Spokesman (essay), New Yorker, 31, January 21, 1956 (also referred to as "Myself as Sportsman" in some sources)
Being Prohibited (essay), New Statesman and Nation, 51, April 2, 1956
Kariba Project (essay), New Statesman and Nation, 51, June 9, 1956
Plea for the Hated Dead Woman (poem), New Statesman and Nation, 51, June 30, 1956

1957

Going Home
The Habit of Loving
The Black Madonna (short story), published in Winter's Tales 3. London: Macmillan.
The Small Personal Voice (essay), in Declaration
Flavours of Exile (short story) published in The London Magazine - Vol. 4, No. 2., edited by John Lehmann; London: Chatto & Windus. 1957.
Tobacco Farm (article) with drawings by Paul Hogarth, published In "The Countryman, A Quarterly Non-Party Review and Miscellany of Rural Life and Work for the English-speaking World", Volume LIV, No. 2, Summer 1957.

1958

A Ripple from the Storm, the third volume of Children of Violence
Mr. Dolinger (play) (also know under the title Before the Deluge), was produced at the Oxford Playhouse, England. The play is unpublished.
Each His Own Wilderness (play) was performed by the English Stage Society at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 23 March.
London Diary (essay), New Statesman, 55, March 15, 1958.
London Diary (essay), New Statesman, 55, March 22, 1958.
Desert Child (essay), New Statesman, 56, November 15, 1958.

1959

Each His Own Wilderness (play) published in New English Dramatists, Three Plays introduced and edited by E. Martin Browne. (Each His Own Wilderness, Doris Lessing; The Hamlet of Stepney Green, Bernard Kops; Chicken Soup with Barley, Arnold Wesker.)
Fourteen Poems
Crisis in Central Africa: The Fruits of Humbug (essay), Twentieth Century, 165, April 1959.

1960

In Pursuit of the English: A Documentary
In Pursuit of the English (excerpt), Alienation. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
Through the Tunnel (short story), published in Great Stories From The World of Sport, editors Peter Schwed and Herbert Warren Wind. London: Heineman.
Ordinary People (essay), New Statesman, 59, June 25, 1960.
Our Friend Judith (short story), Partisan Review, 27, Summer 1960.

1961

The Truth About Billy Newton (play) was produced Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. The play is unpublished.
African Interiors (essay), New Statesman, 62, October 27, 1961.
Letter to the Editor, New Statesman, 62, November 3, 1961.
Smart Set Socialists (essay), New Statesman, 62, December 1, 1961.
Homage for Isaac Babel (short story), New Statesman, 62, December 15, 1961.

1962

The Golden Notebook
Play with a Tiger produced at the Comedy Theatre, London.
From the Black Notebook (excerpt from The Golden Notebook), Partisan Review, 29, Spring 1962.
The New Man (short story), New Statesman, 64, September 7, 1962.
Interview in Authors Talking.
The Grass is Singing adapted as a television play.

1963

A Man and Two Women
One Off the Short List (short story), Kenyon Review, 25, Spring 1963.
A Letter from Home (short story), Partisan Review, 30, Summer 1963.
A Room (short story), New Statesman, 66, August 2, 1963.
My Father (essay), London Sunday Telegraph, September 1, 1963.
What Really Matters (essay), Twentieth Century, 172, Autumn 1963.
The New Man (short story), Voices.
Mrs. Fortescue (short story), Winter's Tales 9.

1964

African Stories
Play with a Tiger produced in New York.
An Unposted Love Letter (short story), published in Thy Neighbor's Wife, Twelve Original Variations on the Theme of Adultery, edited by James Turner; London: Cassell, 1964, Four Square, 1967; New York: Stein and Day, 1968
All Seething Underneath (essay: My Father) abridged, Vogue Magazine, February 15, 1964.
Zambia's Joyful Week (essay), New Statesman, 68, November 6, 1964.
Interview, Counterpoint.

1965

Landlocked, the fourth volume of Children of Violence
Review of A. Hutchinson's Road to Ghana, African-English Literature.
Little Tembi (short story), published in Modern Choice I, editor Eva Figes. London: Blackie.

1966

Her translation of The Storm, a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, is produced by the National Theatre in London. Production of two original television plays, Please Do Not Disturb and Care and Protection. She collaborates on further television scripts based on works by Maupassant.
The Black Madonna
Winter in July
Allah Be Praised (review of The Autobiography of Malcolm X), New Statesman, 71, May 27, 1966.
Here (poem), New Statesman, 71, June 17, 1966.
Visit (poem), New Statesman, 72, November 4, 1966.
Play with a Tiger, in Plays of the Sixties, vol. 1. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1966
Care and Protection (play)
Do Not Disturb (play)
The Storm (from A. Ostrovsky's play)
Between Men (play)
To Room Nineteen (short story), published in The World of Modern FIction: European, editor Stephen Marcus. New York: Simon and Schuster.

1967

Particularly Cats
A fourth television play is adapted from the short story, Between Men.
BBC 2 broadcast of Play with a Tiger, producer: Michael Bakewell, director: Stuart Burge.
She publishes statement in Authors Take Sides on Vietnam.
Particularly Cats (excerpt), McCalls, 94, March 1967.
A Small Girl Throws Stones at a Swan in Regents Park (poem), New Statesman, 74, November 24, 1967.
Hunger the King (poem), New Statesman, 74, November 24, 1967.
Omar Khayyam (essay), New Statesman, 74, December 15, 1967.
Through the Tunnel (short story), published in Breadth of Danger: Fifty Tales of Peril and Fear by Masters of the Short Story, editor Eric Duthie. London: Odhams.

1968

Nine African Stories: With a Specially Written Introduction by The Author, Selected by Michael Marland; London: Longmans, (Selections from African stories)
Three Plays - Includes The Long and the Short and the Tall and Each His Own Wilderness; Willis Hall, Editor, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968, also includes Yes, and After by Michael Hastings
Side Benefits of an Honorable Profession (short story), Partisan Review, 35, Fall 1968.
Afterword in Oliver Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, New York: Fawcett World Library.

1969

The Four-Gated City, the fifth volume of Children of Violence
Particularly Cats (excerpt), Cat Fancy, 12, March-April 1969.
Particularly Cats (excerpt), Cat Fancy, 12, June 1969.
A Few Doors Down (essay), New Statesman, 78, December 26, 1969.

1970 Interview in New American Review 8

1971

Briefing for a Descent into Hell
Briefing for a Descent into Hell shortlisted for The Booker Prize.
Ancient Ways to New Freedom (essay), Vogue, 158, September 15, 1971 and in The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West, edited by L. Lewin; Boulder, Colorado: Keysign Press.
Report on the Threatened City (short story, Playboy, 17, November 1971.
Spies I Have Known (short story), Partisan Review, 38, Winter 1971.
A Deep Darkness (review of Isak Dinisen's Shadows on the Grass), New Statesman, January 15, 1971.
Ant's Eye View (essay on Eugene Marais's The Soul of the White Ant), New Statesman, January 29, 1971.
The Ant Heap (short story), published in Great British Short Novels, editor R.D. Spector. New York: Bantam.

1972

The Story of a Non-Marrying Man and Other Stories
What Looks Like an Egg and Is an Egg? (essay), New York Times Book Review, 77, May 7, 1972.
In the World, Not of It, published in Encounter, August, 1972.
An Old Woman and Her Cat (short story), published in New American Review 14, editor Theodore Solotaroff. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Ancient Way to New Freedom (essay), Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West.
Foreword, An Illfated People.
Preface in reissue of the Golden Notebook.
Postscript in Play with a Tiger.

1973

The Summer Before the Dark
This Was the Old Chief's Country: Collected African Stories, Volume 1
The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories, Volume 2
The Singing Door, a one-act play written for a textbook anthology. Published in:
Letters in The Novels of Doris Lessing.
On The Golden Notebook (Preface to The Golden Notebook), Partisan Review, XL, I
Vonnegut's Responsibility (essay), New York Times Book Review, February 4, 1973.

1974

The Memoirs of a Survivor
A Small Personal Voice (collected essays)
Letters in Doris Lessing Critical Studies.
Play with a Tiger included in the anthology Plays By and About Women, edited by Victoria Sullivan and James Hatch, New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1974.
Introduction to Dusky Ruth and Other Stories by A. E. Coppard; Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1974

1975

Building a new cultural understanding with the people of the East, article in The Times, October 15, 1975.
If you knew Sufi..., article in The Guardian (London), January 8, 1975.
A Sunrise on the Veld, edited by Alan Duff; Series: Cambridge English language learning; London : Cambridge U.P., 1975

1976

Received the French Prix Medicis for Foreigners.
The story "No Witchcraft for Sale" was published in Sisters of Sorcery: Two Centuries of Witchcraft Stories by the Gentle Sex, Manley, Seon & Gogo Lewis. NY: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, Includes stories by Andre Norton, Dorothy Sayers, Doris Lessing and others. Cover illustrated by Edward Gorey.
Doris Lessing: Selected Short Stories; Edited by Alan Cattell; Series:The Pegasus library; London: Harrap

1977

Interview in The Author Speaks
A Mild Attack of Locusts; Edited by Alan Duff; Series: Cambridge English language learning: level 5; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977

1978

To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories, Volume One
The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two
Dust jacket blurb for The House of Hunger by Marechera (Dambudzo), New York: Pantheon (1978)

1979

Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta, the first volume of Canopus in Argos: Archives
Letters in The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing.
In the World, Not of It in The World of the Sufi.
Included in Women Writing, An Anthology, Edited by Denys Val Baker, NY, with Weldon, Lavin, Lessing, O'Brien, Spark, Taylor, etc

1980

The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five, the second volume of Canopus in Argos: Archives
Introduction in Kalila and Dimna by Ramsay Wood; New York: Knopf
Included in A Garland for Jack Lindsay; decorations by Charlotte Mensforth; St. Albans (Hertfordshire), Piccolo Press. Limited edition of 150 copies

1981

The Sirian Experiments, the third volume of Canopus in Argos: Archives
The Sirian Experiments shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Introduction in Learning How to Learn by Idries Shah, Octagon Press.
Introduction in The Tale of the Four Dervishes and Other Sufi Titles
Not A Very Nice Story (short story) included in the anthology: FINE LINES The Best of Ms. Fiction, Edited and with an by Ruth Sullivan, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Film released: Memoirs of a Survivor, starring Julie Christie, directed by David Gladwell.

1982

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, the fourth volume of Canopus in Argos: Archives
Film released: Killing Heat (based on The Grass is Singing) starring Karen Black and John Thaw. Written and Directed by Michael Raeburn.
Our minds have become set in the apocalyptic mode, article in The Guardian (London), June 14, 1982.
Letter to the editor, The Guardian (London), July 1, 1982.
These Shores of Sweet Unreason, article in The Guardian (London), September 25, 1982.
Interview in The Radical Imagination and the Liberal Tradition
Introduction in First Among the Sufies, Life and Thought of Rabia al-Adawiyya by Widad El Sakkakini;ISHK.
Review of Laurens Van der Post Book in Notebooks, Memoirs, Archives - Reading and Rereading Doris Lessing
Reviews in Suffic Searches
Letter to the editor, The Guardian (London), date not specified.
Speech in Shakespeare-Preis
Received the Shakespeare Prize of the West German Hamburger Stiftung and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature.
Contributed to audio tape: An Ancient way to New Freedom, ISHK.

1983

Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, the fifth volume of Canopus in Argos: Archives
The Diary of a Good Neighbor (published under the pseudonym "Jane Somers")
My Father in Fathers-Reflections by Daughters.
Included in the anthology, The Dog Book: A Treasury of the Finest Appreciations Ever Penned About Dogs, Jerrold Mundis (ed.)

1984

If the Old Could (published under the pseudonym "Jane Somers")
Writing Under Another Name (article) & Jane Somers's Diaries (excerpt), London/New York:Granta #13, Autumn 1984.
The Diaries of Jane Somers
(The two "Jane Somers" novels published in one volume under her own name)
Impertinent Daughters (excerpt), London/New York: Granta #14, Winter 1984.

1985

The Good Terrorist
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside - The Massey Lectures Series: a series of 5 lectures broadcast on October 1985 as part of CBC Radio's "Ideas" series.
The Good Terrorist shortlisted for The Booker Prize.
Countdown to Terror, excerpt from The Good Terrorist, published in The Guardian (London), Saturday, September 7, 1985.
Autobiography (Part Two): My Mother's Life (excerpt), London/New York: Granta #17, Autumn 1985.

1986

This Was the Old Chief's Country, No Witchcraft for Sale, The New Man
Read by Doris Lessing (audio cassettes)
Spoken Arts, 1986 (2 cassettes)
Received the W.H. Smith Literary Award and the Mondello Prize in Italy for The Good Terrorist
Introduction to Kalila and Dimna: Tales for Kings and Commoners: Selected Fables of Bidpai; retold by Ramsay Wood; Inner Traditions International Ltd., 1986.

1987

The Wind Blows Away Our Words
Events in the Sky (essay), London/New York: Granta #22, Autumn, 1987.
Received the Palmero Prize.
Afghan accuracy, Letter to the Editor, The Guardian (London), April 17, 1987.
Forward to The Essential Cat, by Thomas Lester; London: Grafton Books

1988

The Fifth Child
Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy for The Fifth Child.
Among the Roses (short story), The Observer, July 24, 1988.
Included in the anthology, Through Other Eyes : Animal Stories by Women, with Ursula Le Guin, Alice Walker, Annie Dillard; Crossing Press, 1988
Three stories / Doris Lessing, Contemporary authors in signed limited editions; Helsinki : Eurographica, 1988, Limited ed. of 350 copies printed by Tipografia Nobili
Collaborated with composer Philip Glass to create the opera: "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" performed by The Houston Grand Opera. Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc., 1988

1989

Particularly Cats and More Cats (illustrated by Anne Robinson)
The Doris Lessing Reader
Received Doctor of Letters, Honorary Degree from Princeton University.
Zimbabwe mobilises the agents of change, article in The Independent (London), January 18, 1989.
Included in Great Cat Tales, Edited by Lesley O'Mara, Illustrated by William Geldart; NY: Carroll & Graf, 1989

1990

Through The Tunnel (short story), Mankato, MN: Creative Education Inc.
In fact, only a minority of journalists are any good (article), winter edition of the British Journalism Review on January 29, 1990.
The Story of Two Dogs (short story) included in the anthology, The Literary Dog: Great Contemporary Dog Stories, Edited by Jeanne Schinto, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990

1991

Particularly Cats... and Rufus (Illustrations by James McMullan, American edition only. Reissue of "Particuarly Cats" with addition of new chaper Rufus, the Survivor)
Introduction to reissue of Before My Time by Niccolo Tucci; Moyer Bell Limited, New York & London, 1991
Film released: Un Homme Et Deux Femmes (A Man and Two Women), Director: Valerie Stroh, French 1991, 90mn, with Valerie Stroh, Lambert Wilson.
Between the fax and the fiction, article in The Guardian (London), December 13, 1991.
Notes for A Case History (short story) included in the anthology, Decades: The Sixties; Compiled by Janet and Andrew Goodwyn; Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1991

1992

London Observed Stories and Sketches
African Laughter
"Language and the Lunatic Fringe" (article/essay), New York Times, Op Ed, June 26, 1992.
Essay included in the anthology The Pleasure of Reading, edited by Antonia Fraser, London: Bloomsbury.

1993

A play based on Memoirs of a Survivor was performed at The Festival Theatre.
Included in the children's book anthology: Adventure Stories; chosen by Clive King, illustrated by Brian Walker; New York: Kingfisher Books, 1993.
An illustrated collection of adventure short stories and excerpts from longer works by a variety of authors, including Robert Graves, Doris Lessing, and Mark Twain.
An Ant Heap (short story) included in the anthology, Classics of Modern Fiction : Twelve Short Novels; Edited by Irving Howe; Fort Worth : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, c1993
A Woman on The Roof (short story) included in the anthology: Fiction; Compiled by R.S. Gwynn; New York: HarperCollins.

1994

Shadows on the Wall of the Cave (transcript of her talk on 19 January 1994)
Conversations, edited by Earl Intersoll
Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949
Foreword in Mercury by Anna Kavan, London: Peter Owen Publishers.
The Day Stalin Died (short story) published in the anthology: The Oxford Book of Modern Women's Stories, edited by Patricia Craig, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
May 5, 1994: reviewed Idries Shah's The Commanding Self in The London Times.
She reviewed The Lost Boat. Avant-Garde Fiction from China (Wellsweep Press, London, 1994) in INDEX on Censorship, Volume 23, May/June 1994.
Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism (essay) published in: Our Country, Our Culture: The Politics of Political Correctness, Edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips, Partisan Review Press, Boston, 1994
Foreward to The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, edited by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press, second edition.

1995

Playing the Game (a graphic novel illustrated by Charlie Adlard)
Spies I Have Known and Other Stories
Received Honorary Degree from Harvard University, June 8, 1995.
Received James Tait Black Prize for best biography: Under My Skin.
Received 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Under My Skin.
On critics' list for the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Golden Notebook included in the exhibition "Books of the Century" at The New York Public Library's Center for the Humanities, May 20, 1995-July 13, 1996, and in The New York Public Library's Books of the Century, published by Oxford University Press
Included in: All the Time in the World: An Anthology of Verse and Prose Celebrating Grandparenthood, Edited by Elizabeth Cairns, U.K.: Age Concern England, 1995.
To Room Nineteen (short story) included in: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 5th Edition, edited by R. V. Cassill, W.W. Norton & Company. Also includes an interview with Doris Lessing.
Impertinent Daughters (essay) published in: The Granta Book of the Family, Edited by Bill Buford, New York: Granta Books (Penquin), 1995
Introduction to The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead, New York: Everyman's Library, Knopf, 1995

1996

Love, Again
The Pit
Play with a Tiger and Other Plays
Through the Tunnel (short story) reprinted in Splash: Great Writing About Swimming, by Laurel Blossom (Editor) & George Plimpton (Introduction), U.S. & U.K: Ecco Press, 1996
On the list of nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature and Britain's Writer's Guild Award for Fiction.
Contributed to an obituary for Idries Shah, London Daily Telegraph, November, 1996.
Excerpt from Shikasta, published in the anthology, Virtually Now: Stories of Science, Technology and the Future, Edited by Jeanne Schinto. Persea Books.
One Off the Short List (short story) included in: The Norton Anthology: Literature by Women, the Traditions in English, Second Edition, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company.

1997

She collaborated with Philip Glass on a second opera, based on "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five", which premiered in Heidelberg, Germany on May 10.
Short story/essay (?) included in Sixty Years of Great Fiction from Partisan Review by William Phillips (Editor), Partisan Review, Boston, MA.
Short story/essay (?) included in Glorious Cats : A Collection of Words and Paintings, by Helen Exley (Editor); Exley Gift Books
The Stare (short story) published in the The New Yorker, July 7, 1997.
The Roads of London (excerpt from Walking in the Shade), Granta # 58, Summer 1997.
Walking in the Shade, Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949 to 1962
Excerpt of story/novel (unknown) included in: The Plain Truth of Things: A Treasury: The Role of Values in a Complex World, edited by Colin Greer & Hergert Kohl; New York HarperCollins 1997.

1998

An Evening with Doris Lessing (lecture & discussion), Partisan Review/1, Winter 1998, Volume LXV Number 1, Boston University.
"Maudie e Jane" (Maudie and Jane) - play based on The Diaries of Jane Somers
Directed by Luciano Nattino
With: Judith Malina and Lorenza Zambon
Casa Degli Alfieri, Italy: Monday, March 30, 1998
Report on the Threatened City (short story) reprinted in The Playboy Book of Science Fiction, Edited by Alice K. Turner, New York, Harperprism, 1998.
Introduction to Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher (The Canon Pocket Bible Series), Edinburgh: Cannongate Books Ltd, 1998; New York: Grove Press, 1999
Plants and Girls (short story) included in Mistresses of the Dark: 25 Macabre Tales by Master Storytellers; edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Denise Little & Robert Weinberg; Barnes & Noble, 1998.

1999

Mara and Dann, an Adventure
Short Story or Essay included in the anthology Her War Story : Twentieth-Century Women Write About War, edited by Sayre P. Sheldon; Southern Illinois University Press, June 1999.
Problems, Myths and Stories, I.C.R. Monograph No: 36, London: Institute for Cultural Research, 1999
Included in For the Love of Books : 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most by Ronald B. Shwartz (Editor); New York, Putnam, 1999
A London View (essay), London/New York:Granta #65, Spring 1999.

2000

A Letter from Home (short story) included in Other People's Mail, an Anthology of Letter Stories, Edited with an Introduction by Gail Pool; University of Missouri Press.
Maudie e Jane, a play based on The Diaries of Jane Somers, performed March 15-20, 2000 at Theatro Duse, Bologna, Italy.
Ben, in the World
Particularly Cats
Reissued with an additional chapter, "The Old Age of El Magnifico."
Burford Books, Short Hills, NJ, 2000

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http://lessing.redmood.com/herlife.html

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Peace Through Understanding

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing pays tribute to a great exponent of Sufism

Biography

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