PUTTING THE QUESTIONS DIFFERENTLY - Softcover

Lessing, Doris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006548504 ISBN 13: 9780006548508

Publisher: Flamingo, 1996

Synopsis

A collection of interviews with the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature that serves as an invaluable companion to her work.

Doris Lessing is one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These interviews give us her thoughts on her early years as a communist and fledgling writer in Southern Rhodesia, her views on marriage, the family and feminism, on other writers from Tolstoy to Lawrence, and on her later experiments in psychotherapy and mysticism. She reveals how these preoccupations have influenced her own work, from ‘The Golden Notebook’ to her acclaimed autobiographical masterpiece ‘Under My Skin’.

The book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand not just Lessing, but also the profound impact she has had on our age.

About this title

About the Author

Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.

From the Back Cover

FIRST BRITISH PUBLICATION

Doris Lessing is now recognised as one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. She has addressed the most urgent concerns of our age, personal and political, through many diverse forms – novels, both traditional and experimental, short stories, plays, essays and journalism; she is a writer of extraordinary versatility.

These twenty-four interviews, many previously unpublished, span the last thirty years, and together make up the most wide-ranging and valuable commentary on her life and work. They include her thoughts on her early years as a communist and fledgling writer in Southern Rhodesia, her views on marriage, the family and feminism, on other writers from Tolstoy to Lawrence, and on her later experiments in psychotherapy and mysticism; and she speaks about how all these preoccupations have influenced her own writing, from 'The Golden Notebook' to her acclaimed autobiographical masterpiece 'Under My Skin'.

The book is illustrated throughout by Doris Lessing’s characteristic directness and clarity. It is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand not just Doris Lessing, but also the profound impact she has on our age.

‘A major figure in twentieth-century literature, Doris Lessing’s labours and prodigious output have helped to change the way we see ourselves.’
MICHÈLE ROBERTS, 'New Statesman'

‘One of the very few novelists who have refused to believe that the world is too complicated to understand’
MAGARET DRABBLE

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006548504
• ISBN 13: 9780006548508
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 274