The truth-sayer

The announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature is always eagerly awaited, for the grist it provides to the mill of those who either greet it ecstatically, or decry it vehemently for one offence or another. The case of Doris Lessing has been no different. American critic Harold Bloom has denounced the Swedish Academy8217;s decision as 8220;pure political correctness . Although Lessing, at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable8230; fourth-rate science fiction.8221; And feminists, among whom she is usually counted, describe her as not quite kosher, for her refusal to wholeheartedly support 8216;The Sisterhood8217;.

Like two other African writers, Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer, Lessing had virtually no formal education. What she learnt came from her reading 8212; Tolstoy, Stendhal, Dickens, D.H. Lawrence, Kipling and Dostovesky. From them, she carried over into her writing a strong sense of 19th century ethical judgement. It is important to note that Lessing8217;s writings, especially the early ones, are heavily autobiographical, much of it emerging from her African experience. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her early engagement with communism and politics, she wrote of the social impact of racism and the apartheid system, the clash of white and African cultures. During the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with The Grass Is Singing, she wrote stories and novellas which exposed the oppression of blacks by white colonials, and the emptiness of the cocooned culture that the white had created. For her outspokenneness, she was banned in 1956 from entering Rhodesia Zimbabwe and South Africa, finally returning only in 1995.

While she continued to explore the African experience, Lessing also began to survey the role of women in society in the five-novel Children Of Violence sequence, published between 1952 and 1969. The series takes Martha Quest from a farm in Africa to the capital of the colony 8212; where she is exposed to city life 8212; and on to London. The series, written, is interesting for two aspects: first, for its African setting, and second, for showing that experience through the eyes of a woman. Martha Quest, the first of the series, deals with the sexual and intellectual awakening of its central character once she leaves the farm.

A Proper Marriage explores a failing marriage, and by its end Martha has left her husband and daughter for Left-wing political involvement. A Ripple from the Storm shows the failure of that political commitment to satisfy her social and personal needs, and Landlocked, which brings the series into the 1940s, completes Martha8217;s separation from both politics and Africa. Postwar London is the setting for the final book, The Four-Gated City, in which the mature Martha has abandoned her political activism for contemplation.

While working on the sequence, Lessing also wrote The Golden Notebook 1962, her most ambitious book. In it, Anna Wulf writes four notebooks, each chronicling her life, and tying it all up in the fifth, golden, volume. From time to time, she steps out, commenting on each piece. The novel made her an instant feminist icon, a role she is famously uncomfortable with. As she noted: 8220;What the feminists want of me is something they haven8217;t examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 8216;Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle towards the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more8217;. Do they really want oversimplied statements? In fact, they do.8221;

If this was not enough, Lessing then entered the field of science fiction with the Canopus In Argos series, a battle between galactic empires over 30,000 years, and made into an opera by Philip Glass. Lessing has noted that they were influenced by the ideas of the Sufi Idries Shah on the evolution of consciousness. In 1985, she wrote The Good Terrorist, about an emotionally immature girl who becomes a terrorist, drawing flak for its refusal to paint everything in black and white. Since then, Lessing has written at least 20 books, including essays, novels, travel books, and an award-winning autobiography. This summer, she also published The Cleft, about an ancient time when women who gave birth only to girls, find a boy has born to them.

What makes Doris Lessing so special? From the beginning, she has been a writer who provokes and teaches. Lessing, at the age of 88, is still energetically creative. The reason for this is that she is not, and never has been, afraid of stepping into a creative landscape to unflinchingly and coolly face, examine and report on issues that might deter a lesser writer and person. It is because, as she has written time and again, she has to tell the truth.

Chaturvedi is a Delhi-based independent writer