Born Oct. 22, 1919, in Iran. British writer.

Lessing spent her childhood and youth in Africa (Southern Rhodesia) and settled in London in 1949. Her works include the anticolonial novel The Grass Is Singing (1950), a novel series including Martha Quest (1952; Russian translation, 1957) and A Proper Marriage (1954), and an African travel diary, Going Home (1957). Lessing’s major works are her collections of realistic short stories and novellas about the manners and mores of the colonial circles in South Africa.

In the mid-1950’s, Lessing underwent an ideological crisis that found its fullest expression in her novel The Golden Notebook (1962). Her drama Play With a Tiger (1962) and her short-story collection A Man and Two Women (1963) expound the hopelessness of contemporary stoicism.