Doris Lessing Wins Nobel in Literature
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STOCKHOLM — English writer Doris Lessing, who ended her formal schooling at age 13 and went on to write novels that explored relationships between the genders and races, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature today.
Ms. Lessing, who turns 88 in just over a week, was born to British parents who were living in what is now Iran. The family later moved to what is now Zimbabwe, where she largely grew up.
She made her debut with “The Grass Is Singing” in 1950. Her other works include the semiautobiographical “Children Of Violence” series, largely set in Africa, that include the works.
Ms. Lessing’s agent, Jonathan Clowes, said Ms. Lessing was out shopping.
“We are absolutely delighted and it’s very well deserved,” he said, adding she may not yet know that she had won the prize.
Her breakthrough was the 1962 “Golden Notebook,” the Swedish Academy said.
“The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that inform the 20th century view of the male-female relationship,” the academy said in its citation announcing the prize.
Other important novels of Ms. Lessing’s include “The Summer Before Dark” in 1973 and “The Fifth Child” in 1988.
Ms. Lessing is the second British writer to win the prize in three years. In 2005, Harold Pinter received the award. Last year, the academy gave the prize to Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk.
