1. Doris Lessing (1919-)
"that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
2007 Nobel Prize Winner

2. Born in Persia of British parents
Grew up and educated in Zimbabwe (former Southern Rhodesia)
Left school at the age of 14 and then earned her living as a nursemaid, telephone operator and clerk.
At 19 married Frank Wisdom, a civil servant; they had two children. The marriage ended in 1943.
In 1943 married the German political activist Gottfried Lessing, a member of the inner circle of the Rhodesian Communist Party.
This second marriage also failed and in 1949 moved to England with her youngest child and the manuscript of her first novel

3. Literary style
Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three periods:
1. The realistic theme (the 1950s-1970s), when she was writing on social issues;
2. The science fiction (the end of the 1970s-1980s);
3. Back to the realistic social analysis (the 1980s-). However, these three periods were overlapped in some sense.

4. Her themes Feminism the alienating power of science
the individuals’ pursuit of their self in a divided society
her searching for a remedy for social illness.

5. Children of Violence
1952
1954
1958
1968
1965

7. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when are forty or fifty - and vice-versa Doris Lessing