Doris Lessing, Travel Writing and the Nobel Prize for Literature

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  10.19.07 | 5:35 AM ET

imageChalk up one Nobel Prize victory for travel writing! Okay, okay. Admittedly this year’s winner Doris Lessing is much better known for writing novels and short stories than for her travel memoir, African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe, about her return to her newly-independent childhood home after decades of government-imposed exile. But much of her best-known fiction, from debut novel “The Grass Is Singing” to the “Children of Violence” series, also focuses on the white settler experience in Rhodesia, and the details of place and time are vital to the story in each work.

The committee that awarded the prize acknowledged the importance of southern Africa in Lessing’s writing, describing her as a writer “who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.”

Related on World Hum:
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* 1,000 Places to Not go Before You Die

Tags: Africa, Life of a Travel Writer, Literary Travel

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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