ABSTRACT
Doris Lessing was born in 1919 in ‘Persia’ (now Iran) and grew up and lived in ‘Southern Rhodesia’ (now Zimbabwe) until 1949, when she came to London. Or, rather, ‘London’: since for her being a colonial has meant that names, places, the colourings of the map have always had something provisional – something arbitrary and ominous – about them. The British colonial society in which she developed her distinctive vision, and where her first novels and stories are set, was marginal and embattled and gruesomely suburban. As she wrote, sardonically, looking back:
Not long ago people set foot for the colonies – the right sort of people, that is, in a spirit of risking everything and damning the cost. These days, a reverse immigration is in progress. The horizon conquerors now set sail or take wing for England, which in this sense means London, determined to conquer it, but on their own terms. (IPE, p. 13)
