Temptation of Jack Orkney

Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing', was published in 1950. Among her other celebrated novels are 'The Golden Notebook', 'The Fifth Child' and 'Memoirs of a Survivor'. She has also published two volumes of her autobiography, 'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the Shade'. Doris Lessing died on 17 November 2013 at the age of 94.

‘What do you say about Doris Lessing? She has shaped the attitudes of a whole generation of women; she has defined and punctured masculine pretensions and has torn strips off liberal double-think. This collection is, it goes without saying, a classic.’ Mary Hope, Spectator‘Intense and tender, valuable and drily humorous stories with streaks of gold. Dazzling.’ The Times‘Doris Lessing is the great novelist of the unspoken thing, of the part a husband and wife cannot tell each other, of the little things that people are reluctant to talk about. She seems to know everything and to forgive it, or, in the overview, to see nothing to forgive. Her work is suffused with a calm charity that reassures, heals and encourages.’ Diane Johnson, New York Times