The Buzz...About Books

Doris Lessing died last Sunday at her home in London at the age of 94.  Fearless and outspoken, Lessing was a literary icon, the British Nobel Laureate who broke with convention in both her life and her writing.  Direct, often provocative, Lessing wielded a razor-sharp intellect that inspired generations. Ideology, gender politics, racism and colonialism (witnessed firsthand while growing up in Zimbabwe) were themes that dominated her vast literary output. Her passing has resulted in an outpouring of tributes.

Read Margaret Atwood's remembrance of meeting Lessing on a park bench in Paris in 1963.  Read a retrospective of her life and work.

Read the tributes in The Toronto Star, The Guardian, The New Yorker, the CBC, The Globe, The Washington Post, the BBC, Slate Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Mirror and The Independant.

Watch Lessing's famous reaction to winning the Nobel Prize in 2007 covered by the New York Times.

Discover or re-read Lessing's works available at the Toronto Public Library:

Selected Fiction:

Memoirs and Other Writings:

Interview with Doris Lessing in 2007

Lessing on cats:

“What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.”

 Lessing on libraries:

“With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one – but no one at all – can'tell you what to read and when and how.”                   

Doris Lessing in 1963