Doris Lessing, 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013

Doris Lessing, author of The Golden Notebook and many other novels and a few non-fiction works, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, died yesterday at the age of 94. As Alexandra Schwarz noted in her wonderful New Yorker blog post ,"On Doris Lessing and Not Saying Thank You", The NYT in its obituary of her sounded "a tone of peevish, gawking reproach. (Much better to read Margaret Atwood’s wonderful tribute in the Guardian.)" It is ever thus with the boldly unconventional female.