Doris Lessing

That same question is asked everywhere. What would satisfy us? Why this relentless restlessness? In her Children of Violence series of novels, Nobel-prize winning novelist, Doris Lessing, has her heroine, Martha Quest, pose that question as life's central question: Towards what is all of our energy directed? Devoid of a religious perspective, Martha can only understand human desire as blind, erotic energy, a kind of voltage, ten thousand volts of energy inside us. For what? For whatever we choose - creativity, love, sex, hate, martyrdom, boredom. --Ron Rolheiser, Longing, Desire, and the Face of God, November 23, 2008


Recommended reading:
by Doris Lessing at Reading Rat


Criticism (articles, essays, reviews):

Doris Lessing wins Nobel prize by Sarah Crown, Guardian Unlimited, October 11, 2007
Doris Lessing wins Nobel prize for literature by Nigel Reynolds, Telegraph, 3:07am BST 12/10/2007
Doris Lessing 'delighted' to win Nobel Prize by Nico Hines, Times Online, October 11, 2007
(via Arts & Letters Daily)

Sexual politics and a Lessing Creation story by Jackie Loohauis-Bennett, review of The Cleft by Doris Lessing. From the Aug. 26, 2007 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Adventures of Doris Lessing by John Leonard, review of Time Bites: Views and Reviews, by Doris Lessing, and The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog, by Doris Lessing, The New York Review of Books, November 30, 2006

The Golden Notebook, by Jo-Ann Mort, Dissent, Summer 2004

Yeti by Elizabeth Lowry, review of Doris Lessing: A Biography by Carole Klein, and Ben, in the World by Doris Lessing, London Review of Books, March 22, 2001