From The Guardian:
“I was coming back from the hospital with my son Peter who was sick. I stepped out of a taxi and there were all these cameras, a whole posse of photographers. As this street is very good for that kind of thing, I thought they were shooting a soap or an episode of Morse or something. But it was me. So I first heard that I had won the Nobel prize for literature from the reporters.”
Announcing the award yesterday, the Nobel Academy, singled out Lessing’s 1962 postmodern feminist masterpiece The Golden Notebook for praise, calling it “a pioneering work” that “belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship”. The academy’s praise for Lessing – and the length of time it had taken for it to materialise – were echoed by other writers yesterday.
The US author Joyce Carol Oates said the prize was long overdue. “It is good of the committee to recognise Lessing’s unique achievement though it has come perhaps two or even three decades late.”
More here.