In Stockholm, the Swedish Academy has chosen the British author Doris Lessing for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The selection of Doris Lessing for a Nobel was popular among the hundreds of journalists gathered for the announcement in Stockholm.
Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl said with skepticism, fire and visionary power Lessing has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.
Doris Lessing was born in 1919 in Persia - modern-day Iran - to British parents, moving as a child with her family to southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where she stayed in school only to the age of 14.
A year after moving to London, she published her first novel in 1950.
The Grass is Singing examines unbridgeable racial conflict in colonial Africa through the eyes of a white farmer’s wife and her black servant.
A member of the British Communist Party during the 1950s and a campaigner against nuclear arms and South African apartheid, Lessing was for years banned from that country and from Rhodesia.
Her literary breakthrough came in 1962 with publication of
The Golden Notebook, seen by many, though not necessarily Lessing, as a pioneering work of modern feminism. A disjointed study of the mind of the main character, Anna Wulf, the novel explores her thoughts about Africa, politics and communism, relationships with men and sex, and Jungian analysis and dream interpretation.
Lessing’s themes shifted to psychology in her works from the 1960s, and by the 1970s she was fascinated with the Islamic mystic tradition of Sufism. Her turn toward science fiction with
the Canopus series in the early 1980s was not warmly received by traditionalist critics, but she has continued to win new readers and numerous literary awards, including the David Cohen British Literary Prize and the Companion of Honour from the Royal Society of Literature, both in 2001.
Following the announcement, the Horace Engdahl told VOA why he was personally so pleased with Lessing’s selection.
"She is one of the truly great writers - of novels, short stories, fiction and non-fiction," Engdahl said. "She is one of the few writers who have had the courage to uphold the principle of equality between the male and female experience, and she has given the impulse to numbers of other women writers. And she is really the mother of a
school that is one of the most important in our contemporary literature."
At 87, Doris lessing is the oldest Nobel Literature laureate since the first prizes were awarded in 1901. Each Nobel Prize is this year accompanied by a check for approximately $1.4 million.
小題1:How old was Doris Lessing when she published her first novel?
小題2:Which of the following about
The Grass is Singing is true?
| A．It is mainly about racial conflict between the whites and the blacks in the US. |
| B．The main characters are a white farmer’s wife and her black servant. |
| C．It was published in Africa. |
| D．It was Doris Lessing’s most famous novel. |
小題3:We can infer from the passage that __________.
| A．Journalists are very interested in the election of Doris Lessing’s for Nobel Prize. |
| B．Doris Lessing regard The Golden Notes as a pioneering work of feminism. |
| C．Doris Lessing has written about many different subjects. |
| D．Many writers have the courage to stick to the equality between the male and female experience. |
小題4:The underlined word
school in the last but one paragraph means________.
| A．institution for educating children |
| B．college or university |
| C．department of a university |
| D．group of writers, thinkers |
小題5: Which of the following can be the best title of this passage?
| A．Doris Lessing wins Nobel Prize for literature. |
| B．The greatest British female writer. |
| C．The oldest Nobel Prize winner. |
| D．2007 Nobel Prize announced in Stockholm. |
