Under My Skin
Fourth Estate Ltd (Verlag)
978-0-00-654825-6 (ISBN)
The first volume of the autobiography of Doris Lessing, author of 'The Grass is Singing' and 'The Golden Notebook', and Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Winner of the James Tait Black Prize 1994. Doris Lessing's autobiography begins with her childhood in Africa and ends on her arrival in London in 1949 with the typescript of her first novel in her suitcase. It charts the evolution first of her consciousness, then of her sexuality and finally of her political awareness with an almost overwhelming immediacy, and is as distinctive and challenging as anything she has ever written. It is already recognised as one of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century.
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing', was published in 1950. Among her other celebrated novels are 'The Golden Notebook', 'The Fifth Child' and 'Memoirs of a Survivor'. She has also published two volumes of her autobiography, 'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the Shade'. Her most recent novel is 'The Cleft'.
This covers Lessing's childhood in Rhodesia, her dreadful relationship with her mother, her dropping out of school aged 14, her first writing, her first love, her first marriage and two children, the war years, her joining of the Communist Party and abandonment of her husband and children - and on up to her leaving Africa for London with the typescript of her first novel in her suitcase. She is unsparing - both of herself and others - and always curious, always engaged, always intent on understanding why. She is one of our greatest writers, and reading this not only sent me back with renewed appetite to her novels but also made me question my own life and choices. Under My Skin exposed me to the powerful blast of Lessing's intelligence. Review by Jane Rogers, whose novels include 'Island' (Kirkus UK)
As is to be expected from Lessing (The Real Thing; 1992, etc.), whose clear and always intelligent no-nonsense writing has explored subjects that transcend the commonplace, this first volume of her autobiography reflects all her remarkable strengths. The year of her birth, 1919, was auspicious neither for her parents in particular nor for the world in general. The ill-matched Taylers had married not out of love but out of a mutual need to expunge the horror of the recently ended world war, which had maimed Lessing's father both physically and mentally - he'd lost a leg in battle, but more important, be was embittered by what he considered Britain's poor treatment of her soldiers. Her mother, an able nurse, had lost a fiance, and marriage now seemed to offer only the consolation of children. These disappointments, exacerbated by the harsh life in rural Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), where her family settled after a stint in Persia, would indelibly shape Lessing. She quarreled frequently with her mother, whose well-meaning strictures she resented; observed her father's despair and his failures as a settler-farmer; and resolved that she would not live like them - "I will not, I will not!" - even if it meant defying convention. Which she did, as she left her first husband and their two children for another man - Gottried Lessing; joined the local Communist Party in the midst of WW II "because of the spirit of the times, because of the Zeitgeist"; and then moved in 1949 permanently to London. Like so many bright and alienated provincials, Lessing found an escape in voracious reading. Though determined to be a writer, the consuming distractions of motherhood, wartime society, and political activities frustrated this ambition for a long time. Refreshingly, not a self-indulgent mea culpa, but a brutally frank examination of how Lessing became what she is - a distinguished writer, a woman who has lived life to the full, and a constant critic of cant. (Kirkus Reviews)
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 9.10.1995 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Flamingo |
| Zusatzinfo | 12 photo plates, facsimiles, portraits |
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 130 x 197 mm |
| Gewicht | 306 g |
| Einbandart | kartoniert |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| Schlagworte | Lessing, Doris; Biografien/Erinnerungen |
| ISBN-10 | 0-00-654825-3 / 0006548253 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-00-654825-6 / 9780006548256 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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