Putting the Questions Differently

A collection of interviews with the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature that serves as an invaluable companion to her work. 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 These twenty-four interviews, many previously unpublished, span the last thirty years, and together make up the most wide-ranging and valuable commentary on her life and work.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 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.