Culture

Less is more

October 11, 2007
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Congratulations are in order for Doris Lessing, who today became the second British writer in the last three years to claim the Nobel prize for Literature, beating off stiff competition from hotly-tipped Philip Roth and Haruki Marukami.

Although not the bookies’ favourite, Lessing, now 87, was in many ways an obvious choice. Ever since her debut The Grass is Singing – a book that has lost none of its dazzling, terrifying brilliance since it was first published in 1950- she has been a fearless and uncompromising writer, and her outspoken criticism of apartheid ensured she was banned from South Africa until 1995. In summing up their judgement, the Swedish Academy panel described her as: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

The last British recipient of the prize, the rarely publicity-shy Harold Pinter, used his Nobel acceptance speech to excoriate a 'brutal, scornful and ruthless' US. But we might expect something different from Lessing, who has long been careful to avoid polemical soundbites. She’s consistently rejected the feminist label – (struggling toward a ‘golden dawn’ where ‘beastly men are no more’ isn’t really her thing, as she once explained). And while her writing takes no prisoners, its quality derives from subtlety and nuance; it has a power born of understatement and silence. Fittingly, then, she was initially unavailable for comment on her latest accolade - 'out shopping', according to her agent.