As I sure you are aware by now that Mr. Al Gore won the Nobel Prize last year for inventing Global Warming, telling us about it, and explaining how we are all screwed because of it. Naturally the mainstream media ignored everyone else who won a Nobel this past year and focused solely on those who made a movie. It was just a few days ago I discovered that they give out a Nobel for Literature. Curious to see if Dan Brown was been awarded this prize yet, I began to look in to Nobel winning authors. Naturally, I have not read any of the winning authors. I blame lack of time, not ignorance, on this one.

I bring all this up because the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature was Doris Lessing.

At the age of 88 she is the oldest winning of the prize in literature. She is the 11^th woman to win the prize. Out of 106 awards, only 11 are women. I’m sure more could be said about that but let’s instead look at Lessing some more.

She was born back in the day in 1919 with American and British nationality after her father, a World War I Capitan, met her mother after he had his leg cut off. She spent her childhood moving around from country to country before settling in Zimbabwe and started writing while working as a nursemaid. Here’s an interesting fact, she was a member of a communist book club which it seems is -sorta- still active today.

Her works can basically be divided in to three themes: Communist themes, psychological themes, and science fiction. Read that sentence again because I said science fiction. Seriously, we’re talking other planets and whatnot. Her science fiction stories were made more as commentaries of social-cultural issues and focused on humans rather than, you know, aliens that are green.

During the 80′s she also published two books under the pseudonym Jane Somers to show how hard it is for new authors to get a break in the publishing world. Lessing is still writing books. In 2007 The Cleft was published. She’s been writing for over 57 years. That’s very admirable to stick with something for so long.

While I have not read any of her works, she seems like a very interesting author and I will be sure to check her out next time I find myself in the bookstore. I’ll probably start with her science fiction works.

Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 8:39 am.
Filed under: Book News.