The Nobel Prize winning novelist Doris Lessing died in London at the age of 94.  She dealt with race, ideology, and gender politics in her novels, and 1962’s “The Golden Notebook” is widely considered to be one of the most important feminist novels ever written.

Lessing was born to British parents in Persia (now Iran) on 22 October, 1919 and the family moved to what was then called Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where she grew up.  Dropping out of school at age 13, she taught herself about writing by reading the works of Dickens, Tolstoy, D.H. Lawrence and Dostoevsky.

She moved to Britain at 30, escaping the scene of an unhappy childhood and two failed marriages, carrying the manuscript of a novel that broke new ground with its depiction of an inter-racial relationship in her white-ruled homeland.  “The Grass Is Singing” was a bestseller in Britain, Europe and America.  Much of her work in the 1950s and ‘60s dealt with the sterile, boozy culture of white colonials in Africa and the dispossession of black Africans in their own land.

Lessing was awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 2007 at the age of 88. The Swedish academy called her “the epicist of the female experience” who had “subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.”

“She was a wonderful writer with a fascinating and original mind; it was a privilege to work for her and we shall miss her immensely,” longtime friend and agent Jonathan Clowes said.

The author Fay Weldon praised Lessing for “her concern for humanity, her sense of the sweep of history and her ability to place human beings in it.”

“She was just the most remarkable writer and we won’t see her like again,” she added.