3 Review(s)

Doris Lessing was the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature and the citation described her as that “epicist of female experience who, with scepticism, fire and visionary power, has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”. The Golden Notebook was her real breakthrough. The book enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature has called lessing’s “inner space fiction”, her work that explores mental and societal breakdown. The book also contains a powerful anti-war and anti-stalinist message, an extended analysis of communism and the Communist Party in England from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a famed examination of the budding sexual and women’s liberation movements. This critical study assesses and critically examines Lessing’s hugely successfully novel, taking into account its themes as well as its social and political concerns for the benefit of students in our universities. Shakti Batra has been Vice-Principal, Dyal Singh College (University of Delhi), has also taught at the Kabul University and the University of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek.