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On 11 October 2007 Doris Lessing came home to West Hampstead from the grocery shop to find journalists at her door. Told she had won the Nobel Prize in Literature, she said “Oh Christ” and carried on bringing in her groceries. She was 87, born in Persia, raised on a struggling farm in Southern Rhodesia, a school-leaver at 13, and had arrived in London in 1949 with a small son and the manuscript of her first novel. Over the next six decades she wrote realist novels about Africa, the book that became a touchstone of the women’s movement, a five-volume series she called “space fiction”, and two novels under a false name to test her own publishers. This guide covers her 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1950–2008 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Doris Lessing’s best-known books are The Golden Notebook (1962), The Grass Is Singing (1950), The Good Terrorist (1985) and The Fifth Child (1988). Start with The Grass Is Singing, her short first novel about a white farmer’s wife in Southern Africa and her killing. Read on for the Children of Violence sequence, the Canopus in Argos series and the Jane Somers hoax.
Where to Start with Doris Lessing
If you want a short, gripping first novel
→ The Grass Is Singing (1950) — a murder on a failing farm in Southern Africa.
If you want her defining book
→ The Golden Notebook (1962) — the novel of Anna Wulf and her four notebooks.
If you want something short and unsettling
→ The Fifth Child (1988) — a family novel that turns into horror.
If you want her speculative fiction
→ The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) — a city falling apart, seen from one flat.
13 Doris Lessing Books, in Order
The Grass Is Singing
Her first novel opens with the news that Mary Turner, a farmer’s wife, has been killed by Moses, the family’s Black servant, then goes back to show how she got there: a town woman marries the struggling farmer Dick Turner, treats the farm workers harshly and slowly loses her hold on herself. It was filmed in 1981 by Michael Raeburn as Killing Heat, with Karen Black and John Thaw.
Martha Quest
The first of the five Children of Violence novels (1952–1969). Martha Quest, a restless, bookish teenager on a poor farm in a British colony in southern Africa, leaves her parents for the nearby town, an office job and the social life of the late 1930s. The series follows her into marriage, left-wing politics and, finally, London.
The Golden Notebook
The writer Anna Wulf keeps four notebooks: black for her years in Southern Rhodesia, red for the Communist Party, yellow for a novel about the end of a love affair, blue for her diary. A short conventional novel, Free Women, about Anna and her friend Molly, runs between them, and a fifth, gold notebook tries to pull her life back together. It became her breakthrough and was included in TIME’s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.
The Four-Gated City
The last and longest Children of Violence novel takes Martha Quest to post-war London, where she runs the household of a writer, Mark Coldridge, through the 1950s and 1960s. Its final section jumps ahead to a catastrophe at the end of the century, the first sign of the speculative fiction she wrote next.
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
A classics professor, Charles Watkins, is found confused in London and taken to a psychiatric hospital. The novel alternates between his own account of a mythic sea voyage and the notes and letters of the doctors trying to bring him back. It was shortlisted for the 1971 Booker Prize.
The Summer Before the Dark
Kate Brown, 45, with her husband and grown children away for the summer, takes work as an interpreter at an international conference on food, travels to Turkey and to Spain, where she has an affair with a younger man. Away from the role of wife and mother, she finds out how little of her identity was her own.
The Memoirs of a Survivor
In a near-future British city after an unexplained “Crisis”, a middle-aged woman watches from her flat as gangs of children take over the streets. A stranger leaves her in charge of a teenage girl, Emily, and her cat Hugo; through the wall of the flat the narrator finds another, dreamlike world. Filmed in 1981 by David Gladwell, with Julie Christie.
Shikasta
The first of the five Canopus in Argos novels (1979–1983), which Lessing called “space fiction”. Told through reports and documents from the galactic empire of Canopus, it is a secret history of Earth, “Shikasta”, from the beginning of life to a third world war, and includes a trial of the Europeans for the crimes of colonialism. Some reviewers felt she had abandoned realism.
The Diary of a Good Neighbour
Published under the name Jane Somers to show how hard it was for unknown writers to get into print: her regular UK publisher turned it down, and Michael Joseph and Knopf took it on. Janna, a successful magazine editor, befriends Maudie Fowler, a poor, fierce woman in her nineties. A sequel, If the Old Could, followed in 1984, and both appeared under her own name as The Diaries of Jane Somers.
The Good Terrorist
Alice, an unemployed graduate in her mid-thirties, moves into a derelict London squat with a group of far-left “comrades” and mothers them, fixing the plumbing and the electricity, while they drift towards building a car bomb. Lessing said the 1983 IRA bombing of Harrods set her wondering how easily an ordinary young person could slide into terrorism. It was shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize and won the WH Smith Literary Award and the Mondello Prize.
The Fifth Child
Harriet and David Lovatt, a conventional couple in the 1960s, buy a big house outside London and plan a large, happy family. Four children arrive; the fifth, Ben, is violent and strange from birth, and the family breaks apart around him. A sequel, Ben, in the World, followed in 2000.
Under My Skin
The first volume of her autobiography covers her childhood in Persia and on the Rhodesian farm, leaving school at 13, two marriages and her departure for London in 1949, leaving the two children of her first marriage behind with their father. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. The second volume, Walking in the Shade (1997), runs to 1962.
Alfred and Emily
Her last book, about her parents, Alfred Tayler, who lost a leg in the First World War, and Emily McVeagh, the nurse who looked after him. The first half is a novella imagining the lives they might have had if the war had never happened; the second is a memoir of the lives they actually had in Persia and Rhodesia.
In What Order to Read Doris Lessing
Most of her books stand alone and can be read in any order. The two exceptions are the series: the five Children of Violence novels, which follow Martha Quest from adolescence in Africa to London, and the five Canopus in Argos novels, which share a universe but can each be read separately. The Fifth Child has a sequel, Ben, in the World.
Publication order shows the phases her critics describe: the African realism of the 1950s, the psychological and political novels of the 1960s, the inner and outer “space” of the 1970s, and a return to London realism in the 1980s. Reading The Grass Is Singing before The Golden Notebook helps, because Anna Wulf’s best-selling African first novel is close to it.
A reading path
1. The Grass Is Singing (1950)
2. The Golden Notebook (1962)
3. The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
4. The Good Terrorist (1985)
5. Under My Skin (1994)
Everything Else Doris Lessing Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 15 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
The rest of Children of Violence
3
3 books · 1954–1965
- 1954A Proper MarriageMartha’s first marriage, volume 2
- 1958A Ripple from the StormMartha in wartime left-wing politics, volume 3
- 1965Landlockedthe end of the war years in Africa, volume 4
The rest of Canopus in Argos
4
4 books · 1980–1983
- 1980The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Fivea fable of two rulers forced to marry; made into a Philip Glass opera (1997)
- 1980The Sirian Experimentsshortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize
- 1982The Making of the Representative for Planet 8a planet freezing to death; Philip Glass opera, Houston Grand Opera, 1988
- 1983The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empirethe fifth and last volume
Other novels
5
5 books · 1984–2007
- 1984If the Old Couldthe second Jane Somers novel
- 1996Love, Againan older woman falls in love while working on a play
- 2000Ben, in the Worldthe sequel to The Fifth Child
- 2001The Sweetest Dreama London household from the 1960s onwards
- 2007The Clefta fable about the first men and women
Stories, memoir and non-fiction
3
3 books · 1951–1997
- 1951This Was the Old Chief’s Countryher first collection of African stories
- 1957Going Homeher return to southern Africa in 1956
- 1997Walking in the Shadeautobiography, volume two, 1949–1962
The years · 1919–2013
Quick facts about Doris Lessing
- Known for
- Lessing is known for The Golden Notebook and for writing across realism, politics and “space fiction” about women, colonial Africa and a divided civilisation, work that won her the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 1919
- Born in Kermanshah, Persia
- 1949
- Moves to London with her first novel
- 1979
- Shikasta begins her “space fiction”
- 2007
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- 2013
- Dies in London, aged 94
- Born
- Doris May Tayler, 22 October 1919, Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran); grew up from 1925 on a farm in Southern Rhodesia
- Died
- 17 November 2013, at home in West Hampstead, London, aged 94
- Education
- Left school at 13 and taught herself from then on
- Family
- Married Frank Wisdom (1939–43) and Gottfried Lessing (1943–49); three children, the two eldest left with their father in Rhodesia in 1949
- Politics
- Left the Communist Party in 1956; banned from South Africa and Rhodesia the same year; watched by MI5 for some twenty years
- Honours
- Nobel Prize in Literature (2007); Companion of Honour (1999); declined an OBE (1977) and a damehood (1992)
- Booker Prize
- Shortlisted three times: 1971, 1981 and 1985
The red mark is 1962: The Golden Notebook, her breakthrough novel.
How Doris Lessing Writes: Fragments, Phases and Scrutiny
Lessing wrote in clearly marked phases. The early books are realist novels of colonial Africa, close to her own life on the farm and in Salisbury. The Golden Notebook breaks that realism into pieces on purpose: Lessing said its main theme was fragmentation, and the novel is built from four coloured notebooks and a conventional short novel that comment on each other.
From the late 1960s she turned inward and outward at once. Briefing for a Descent into Hell and The Memoirs of a Survivor follow minds and cities breaking down, and the Canopus in Argos books, influenced by her interest in Sufism, look at human history from the viewpoint of galactic empires. She called them “space fiction” and said the form let her tell a tale, pose questions and explore ideas; some readers who loved her realism refused to follow her.
What holds the phases together is the habit the Swedish Academy named in 2007: subjecting “a divided civilisation to scrutiny” with “scepticism, fire and visionary power”. She wrote about women’s lives without accepting the label of feminist writer, and about politics without trusting any party line, including the one she had followed herself in the 1940s and 1950s.
Watch
Doris Lessing wins the Nobel Prize, 2007
BBC Newsnight reports on Lessing’s Nobel Prize in Literature in October 2007, from its archive.
Frequently asked questions about Doris Lessing’s books
How many books has Doris Lessing written?
More than 70 works, according to the Booker Prize Foundation, including novels, stories, memoirs, essays, plays, poetry and opera libretti. This page lists 28: the 13 key books plus 15 more in the bibliography, among them the rest of her two five-book series.
What are Doris Lessing’s books in order?
The key books are The Grass Is Singing (1950), Martha Quest (1952), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Four-Gated City (1969), Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), Shikasta (1979), The Diary of a Good Neighbour (1983), The Good Terrorist (1985), The Fifth Child (1988), Under My Skin (1994) and Alfred and Emily (2008).
Where should I start with Doris Lessing?
With The Grass Is Singing (1950), her short first novel about Mary Turner and her death on a failing farm in Southern Africa. If you want something equally short and more modern, try The Fifth Child (1988); go to The Golden Notebook once you know her voice.
What is Doris Lessing’s most famous book?
The Golden Notebook (1962), the novel of the writer Anna Wulf and her four notebooks. It was included in TIME’s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923 and became closely linked with the women’s movement.
Why did Doris Lessing win the Nobel Prize?
The Swedish Academy awarded her the 2007 prize as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”. She was 87 when it was announced, then the oldest winner of the literature prize. Her lecture, “On Not Winning the Nobel Prize”, was read in Stockholm by her publisher Nicholas Pearson.
Is The Golden Notebook a feminist novel?
It is often read as one, and it inspired many readers in the women’s movement. Lessing herself resisted the label: in a 1994 interview with The New York Times she said she was surprised by the book’s lasting success and disappointed that the movement it helped inspire had, in her view, lost its energy.
What did Doris Lessing say about 9/11?
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País in October 2007, shortly after the Nobel announcement, she said that September 11 was terrible but that, measured against the history of IRA attacks in Britain, “what happened to the Americans wasn’t that terrible”, and called Americans “a very naive people, or they pretend to be”. The remarks were widely reported and criticised in the United States.
Who was Jane Somers?
A pseudonym. In the early 1980s Lessing wrote two novels as Jane Somers, The Diary of a Good Neighbour (1983) and If the Old Could (1984), to show how hard it was for new writers to be published. Her own UK publisher rejected the first; Michael Joseph and Knopf accepted them. In 1984 they were reissued under her name as The Diaries of Jane Somers.
Have Doris Lessing’s books been adapted?
Yes. The Grass Is Singing was filmed in 1981 as Killing Heat, with Karen Black and John Thaw, and The Memoirs of a Survivor in 1981 with Julie Christie. Philip Glass wrote operas, with libretti by Lessing, on The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (Houston Grand Opera, 1988) and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1997).
Is Doris Lessing still alive?
No. She died at her home in West Hampstead, London, on 17 November 2013, aged 94.
Footnotes
- Doris Lessing — Wikipedia
- Doris Lessing — Facts, NobelPrize.org
- Doris Lessing — The Booker Prizes
- The Golden Notebook — Wikipedia
- The Good Terrorist — Wikipedia
- Nobel laureate: Sept. 11 ‘wasn’t that terrible’ — NBC News, 2007
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best…”
— Doris Lessing, “On Not Winning the Nobel Prize”, Nobel lecture (2007)
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