Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

DORIS LESSING WINS NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

88 year old Doris Lessing (personally, one of my favorite fiction writers!) has just won the Nobel Prize. News reports say she wasn’t surprised. She said that she had won every other prize, so it only seemed right that they present her with that one, because she wouldn’t be allowed to win it after she was dead. My own interest in Doris Lessing is that she comes across as both realist and mystic at the same time. (She was a long time friend of the Sufi writer and translator Idres Shah.) Lessing weaves Sufi philosophy into many of her novels adding depth and wonder to the works. I am looking forward to reading her latest novel, The Cleft, plus several other recent novels by her that are just now finding their way onto bookstore shelves. At 88, she is not only a great writer, but also an extremely prolific one.

The Cleft
Year First Published: 2007
First Published by: HarperCollins
Category: Novel
This Edition: American First Edition
ISBN: 0060834862

Doris Lessing CH OBE (born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia [now Iran],[1] on 22 October 1919[2]) is a British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook.

In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by the Swedish Academy as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.[3] Lessing is only the eleventh woman to win the prize in its 106-year history,[4][5] and also the oldest person ever to win the literature award.[6] (Info. from Wikipedia)

From the book jacket:
In the last years of his life, a contemplative Roman senator embarks on one last epic endeavor: to retell the history of human creation and reveal 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.
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.

(An ongoing list of Doris Lessing’s works):

Fiction:

The Grass Is Singing (1950),

This Was the Old Chief’s Country (stories, 1952),

Martha Quest (Children of Violence series, 1952),

A Proper Marriage(Children of Violence series, 1954),

Five: Short Novels(1955),

“Retreat to Innocence (1956),

The Habit of Loving (stories, 1958),

A Ripple From the Storm (Children of Violence series, 1958),

The Golden Notebook(1962),

A Man and Two Women(stories, 1963),

African Stories (1964),

Landlocked (Children of Violence series, 1966),

The Four-Gated City (Children of Violence series, 1969)

Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (1971),

The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories ([republished as Vol. 1 of Collected Stories, 1978] 1972),

The Summer Before the Dark (1973), “The Memoirs of a Survivor” (1975),

To Room Nineteen (Vol. 2 of Collected Stories, 1978),

The Diaries of Jane Somers ([plus “The Diary of a Good Neighbor” (1983)

If the Old Could… (1984), originally under the pseudonym Jane Somers], 1984),

The Good Terrorist (1985),

The Fifth Child (1988),

Ben in the World (2001)

The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches” (1992),

Canopus in Argos: Archives ([Colonized Planet V, Shikasta included (1979),

The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980),

The Sirian Experiments: The Report of Ambien II, of the Five (1981),

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982),

Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983)], 1992),

Playing the Game: Graphic Novel (1993),

Winter in July (stories, 1993), “Love, Again” (1996),

Going Home (1996)

Mara and Dann (1999), “The Sweetest Dream” (2002)

The Grandmothers (2003)

Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter: Griot and Snow Dog(2006)

Time Bites (2006)

NONFICTION:

Going Home (1957),

In Pursuit of the English (1961),

Particularly Cats (1967),

A Small Personal Voice: Essays, Reviews, Interviews (1975),

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (1987),

The Wind Blows Away Our Words (1987),

African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe (1992),

Under My Skin (Vol. 1 of “My Autobiography, 1949-1962,” 1994)

Walking in the Shade (Vol. 3 of “My Autobiography, 1949-1962,1997)