Doris Lessing (born 1919) was a South African expatriate writer known for her strong sense of feminism. A short story writer and novelist, as well as essayist and critic, Lessing was deeply concerned with the cultural inequities of her native land. The h...

Doris Lessing burst upon the British literary scene in 1950 with her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and she has remained at the top ever since. In the past four decades, her work has had a profound and lasting influence on both women and men, and the...

[This entry was updated by Paul Schlueter from his entry in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 228-254.] Doris Lessing burst upon the British literary scene in 1950 with her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and she has...

Alan Burns probably writes best when he ignores the desire to be a popular writer and writes out of the disillusion shared by most good art. Burns's early work appeared in the 1950s, when several British writers in addition to him shared an ambitious,...

HUMAN BEINGS HAVE been burrowing into the planet since the dawn of organized society. Indeed, so intertwined are excavation and civilization that during many epochs of antiquity you couldn't tell Eurasia from a hole in the ground. Probably the earliest large-scale subterranean success...

With a ceremony that went off like a classic Swiss timepiece, officials Friday inaugurated the world's longest overland tunnel, a 34.6-kilometer-long (21-mile-long) rail link under the Alps meant to ease highway traffic jams in the mountainous country.The tunnel, which took eight years to build and...

Accompanied by brass bands and fireworks, the Swiss inaugurated the world's longest overland tunnel Friday, opening a new era of transportation through the Alps _ the natural barrier in the heart of Europe.The first train burst through a banner declaring "Loetschberg -Connecting Europe" _ firecrackers...

This essay deals with independence. Doris Lessing's short story, "Through the Tunnel," is about a dependant `mummy's boy' named Jerry who struggles through a tough journey to achieve independence. As the story continues he encounters a group of boys, which he wants to be accepted by. This encounter with the boys causes him to change. He sets himself a challenge to allow him to gain a sense of independence.