Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing', was published in 1950. Among her other celebrated novels are 'The Golden Notebook', 'The Fifth Child' and 'Memoirs of a Survivor'. She has also published two volumes of her autobiography, 'Under my Skin' and 'Walking in the Shade'. Doris Lessing died on 17 November 2013 at the age of 94.

‘An eloquent statement, one of the strengths of this account of a nation’s tragedy is that Doris Lessing evokes not sadness but laughter. She describes this as “the marvellous African laughter born somewhere in the gut, seizing the whole body with good-humoured philosophy. It is the laughter of poor people”.’ TLS‘Innumerable conversations – of Africans, among them poets and teachers and cooks; of whites, some of whom have “taken the Gap” to South Africa then returned, disillusioned – contribute to Doris Lessing’s picture of the new Zimbabwe. Enthralling, significant and provocative.’ Independent‘“African Laughter” conveys a country and its people more completely than any other book I have read. It is filled with stories, anecdotes, newspaper cuttings , poems, obituaries, songs, even Doris Lessing’s synosis for a film – the cumulative effect is extraordinary. As well as a remarkable immediacy, the narrative has an irrepressible physical vigour which reflects perfectly the vitality of the Zimbabwean people.’ Daily Telegraph