The Fiction of Doris Lessing: Re-envisioning Feminism

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Doris Lessing (19192013), a prolific contemporary author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 for her life work. Examining five decades of Lessings unique life, narrative strategies, and the literary traditions that she drew upon and improvised, this book highlights her extraordinary significance as a writer of our times and for our times. Lessings fiction and non-fiction provide a seminal understanding of the key issues that shaped the twentieth century. Autodidactic and keenly interested in the world around her, Lessing flagged the problems of racism in Africa; the inequity of class in modern England; the limitations of white, middle-class womens movements that overlooked the rights of women across race and class; the marginalisation of individuals; the horror of nuclear war and the need for disarmament; and the hazardous global expansion in the face of unrelenting technological progress. Further, she raised the concern of the atomisation of modern families, violence and the urgent need for alternate modes of viewing, voicing anxieties decades ahead of other contemporary writers. Making futuristic projections through innumerable genres of writing, such as realistic narratives, memoirs, diaries and science fiction, Lessing examines myth, psychoanalysis and Marxist perspectives, engaging with a gamut of experiences that have defined modernity, and sets up feminist blueprints that challenge atrophying patriarchal hegemonies.

Author Bio

Ratna Raman is Associate Professor at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, where she teaches English language and literature to undergraduate and graduate students.