Doris Lessing

Dropping out of school at age thirteen would seem not to set a young woman up for a life in letters, but more than sixty books later, Doris Lessing has the last laugh at the vicious nuns and finishing-school marms who made her formal education such a drag. A self-made and wickedly sharp intellect with an unrestricted imagination, Lessing has lived in several countries (including South Africa, which exiled her for her political views), been observant witness to the twentieth century’s most pivotal political and social moments, and defied in her work and life the prescribed behavior for women of her generation. In Time Bites, her first collection of essays, she explores with typical precision and wit a huge range of topics, including Sufism, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, American isolationism, and the imagined sex life of Leo Tolstoy. At eighty-six, Lessing remains a vital force in literature, and she’s not planning on retiring anytime soon.