Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing dies at 94

The celebrated author Doris Lessing died on Nov 17th. She was born in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 but spent most of her childhood in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Most of Lessing’s fiction is autobiographical, much of it emerging out of her experiences in Africa. Her work focuses on a wide range of issues from the politics of race and gender to the role of the family and the individual in society. Lessing’s best known and most influential work is The Golden Notebook which made her a reluctant feminist icon on its publication in 1962. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007.