Lessing, a Nobel-Prize winning author who is popular for her works such as 'The Golden Notebook' and 'The Grass is Singing', passes away at her London home.
- Nov 18, 2013
AceShowbiz - Author Doris Lessing, who wrote about 50 novels covering various subjects, has passed away. The Nobel-Prize winning author died on Sunday, November 17 at her home in London according to her publisher HarperCollins.
"Doris Lessing was one of the great writers of our age. She was a compelling storyteller with a fierce intellect and a warm heart who was not afraid to fight for what she believed in. It was an honor for HarperCollins to publish her," said the publisher's U.K. chief executive, Charlie Redmayne, as quoted by The Guardian.
Lessing was born in October 22, 1919, in Iran. Her family moved to Zimbabwe when she was 5 years old. Lessing, who got married and divorced twice, moved to U.K. when she was 30. She published her first novel "The Grass Is Singing" in 1950 and got popular with her novel "The Golden Notebook", published in 1962.
The author received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. At 87, she was the oldest writer to receive the honor. "The burgeoning feminist movement saw (The Golden Notebook) as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship," the Swedish Academy said at that time. The Academy then praised her "skepticism, fire and visionary power."
When reporters gathered in front of her home and told her that she won the prize, Lessing said, "I couldn't care less." She added, "I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old (it was a few days before her birthday) and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."
Throughout her career, Lessing wrote more than 50 novels. Her last work was "Albert and Emily", published in 2008. Pearson, her editor at that time, said, "That was a very interesting book for her, revisiting the early life of her mother and her father and how they had been touched by the first world war. At the time she said to me 'this is my last book,' and we accepted that. She was already at a great age, and I could see she was tired." Lessing is survived by her daughter Jean and granddaughters Anna and Susannah.
