Doris Lessing’s long-awaited follow-up to the first part of her autobiography, the hugely successful Under My Skin.
In Walking in the Shade we move into the dazzling heyday of Lessing’s career, sparked off by the international success of her first novel, The Grass is Singing, in 1950.
A wonderful evocation of London’s literary and political life during the 1950s and 1960s. Doris Lessing was at the very centre of the intellectual scene at that time and knew many of its personalities and opinion-makers – Kenneth Tynan, John Osborne, E.P. Thompson, Bertrand Russell and others.
Perhaps the most open and frank books Lessing has ever written. She writes about her love affairs, her depression at the ending of an important relationship and her experience of bringing up a child on her own.
Doris Lessing describes the genesis of her novel, The Golden Notebook – perhaps her greatest work, certainly her most popular – in great detail.
Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.