Born October 22, 1919, in Kermanshah, Persia (present-day Iran), Doris Lessing moved to a farm in Southern Rhodesia with her family in 1925. Her father was an unsuccessful maize farmer who, like thousands of his British contemporaries, ventured into southern Africa in search of freedom and prosperity but found instead isolation and despair. Lessing left the countryside for the capital of Salisbury in 1937 (present-day Harare, Zimbabwe). In Salisbury, she found a job as a typist and joined the Communist Party, which led to her becoming an active member of the movement for African rights. After two unsuccessful marriages and three children, Lessing left Africa for London in 1949 to concentrate on professional writing. Her fiction has been acclaimed for its humanist portraits as well as provocative subject matter. It was with the publication of her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, that Lessing established herself as one of the most formidable novelists to emerge since World War II—a writer unafraid to tackle taboo subjects of the day and to challenge the status quo. She continued to focus on African issues in her widely acclaimed five-volume Children of Violence series, featuring the autobiographical heroine, Martha Quest (1952-69), as well as in short stories and memoirs, including her nonfiction African Laughter.
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