
An essential and definitive collection of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner's finest essays, reviews, reminiscences and interviews from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
'The novelist talks as an individual to individuals, in a small personal voice. In an age of committee art, public art, people may begin to feel again a need for the small personal voice; and this will feed confidence into writers and, with confidence because of the knowledge of being needed, the warmth and humanity, and love of people which is essential for a great age of literature.'
In this collection of her non-fiction, Lessing's own life and work are the subject of a number of pieces, as are fellow writers such as Isak Dinesen and Kurt Vonnegut. There are essays on Malcolm X and Sufism, discussions of the responsibility of the artist, thoughts on her exile from Southern Rhodesia, and a fascinating memoir of her fraught relationship with her mother.
Lit throughout by Doris Lessing's desire for truth-telling, 'A Small Personal Voice' is both an important collection of writings by and a self-portrait of one of the most significant writers of the past century.
Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; born 22 October 1919) is a British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by the Swedish Academy as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to win the Literature Prize. 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".

An essential and definitive collection of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner's finest essays, reviews, reminiscences and interviews from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
'The novelist talks as an individual to individuals, in a small personal voice. In an age of committee art, public art, people may begin to feel again a need for the small personal voice; and this will feed confidence into writers and, with confidence because of the knowledge of being needed, the warmth and humanity, and love of people which is essential for a great age of literature.'
In this collection of her non-fiction, Lessing's own life and work are the subject of a number of pieces, as are fellow writers such as Isak Dinesen and Kurt Vonnegut. There are essays on Malcolm X and Sufism, discussions of the responsibility of the artist, thoughts on her exile from Southern Rhodesia, and a fascinating memoir of her fraught relationship with her mother.
Lit throughout by Doris Lessing's desire for truth-telling, 'A Small Personal Voice' is both an important collection of writings by and a self-portrait of one of the most significant writers of the past century.
Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; born 22 October 1919) is a British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by the Swedish Academy as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to win the Literature Prize. 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".