Time Bites

Views and Reviews

Doris Lessing

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780007179862
• eBook ISBN: 9780007290093
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Assembled here for the first time in book form are the very best occasional writings from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A selection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays: articles on writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and Mikael Bulgakov sit alongside autobiographical looks at the beliefs that have shaped Lessing's thinking. There are adoring and adorable pieces on the beloved cats that she has allowed to share her life, and insightful looks at the Africa in which she grew up, and London and England, the place where she made her home.

The range of subjects, cultures and periods within these essays is huge, but the collection is utterly consistent in one key regard: Doris Lessing's clear-eyed vision and clearly expressed prose are present throughout. There is a huge amount of wisdom and entertainment in these pages, shot through with Lessing's infectiously forthright, zestful and impish spirit.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Jane Austen
• D. H. Lawrence’s ‘The Fox’
• Carlyle’s House: Newly Discovered Pieces By Virginia Woolf
• On Tolstoy
• The Man Who Loved Children
• Kalila And Dimna – The Fables of Bidpai
• Speech At Vigo On Getting The Prince of Asturias Prize
• Censorship
• The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer
• Preface to Ecclesiastes, King James Version
• Writing Autobiography
• The Amazing Victorian: A Life of George Meredith
• Bulgakov’s The Fatal Eggs
• ‘Now You See Her, Now You Don’t’
• Stendhal’s Memoirs of An Egotist
• Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age
• Henry Handel Richardson
• A Reissue of The Golden Notebook
• Anna Kavan
• Philip Glass
• Trail of Feathers
• Chapter William Philips, Who Died In
• Books
• Niccolò Tucci’s Before My Time
• The Wrong Way Home
• Biography
• About Cats
• The Maimie Papers
• Olive Schreiner
• When I Was Young …
• Preface For The Writers’ And Artists’ Yearbook
• Simone De Beauvoir
• My Room
• A Book That Changed Me
• The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian, Nirad C. Chaudhuri
• Old
• Professor Martens’ Departure
• How Things Were
• A Nazi Childhood
• Knowing How To Know: A Practical Philosophy In The Sufi Tradition
• The Tragedy of Zimbabwe
• East Meets West: The Elephant In The Dark
• ‘What Novel or Novels Prompted Your own Political awakening?’
• The Most Significant Book To Come out of Africa
• The Sufis
• The Ice Palace: Frozen Secrets Stranded In A Waterfall
• Problems, Myths And Stories
• After 9.11
• The Past Is Myself, Christabel Bielenberg
• The Story of Hai
• Sufi Philosophy And Poetry
• The Way
• A Week In Heidelberg
• Dancing With Cuba, Alma Guillermoprieto
• For A Book Trust Pamphlet
• The Three Royal Monkeys, Walter De La Mare
• Catlore, Desmond Morris
• The Englishman’s Handbook
• A. E. Coppard
• A Festschrift, Idries Shah
• The Nine Emotional Lives Of Cats
• Mukiwa: A White Boy In Africa
• Clarissa
• Summing Up: When Idries Shah Died
• Opera
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Review
• By the same Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher