A Small Personal Voice Essays, Reviews, Interviews Edited by Paul Schlueter Year First Published: 1994 First Published by: Flamingo Category: Non-Fiction This Edition: British first edition, softcover original ISBN: 0-00-654759-1

From the book cover:

A Small Personal Voice is an essential and definitive collection of Doris Lessing's finest essays, reviews, reminiscences and interviews from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Displaying to the full the extraordinary range of her intellectual curiosity, this volume includes tributes to fellow writers such as Isak Dinesen, Olive Schreiner and Kurt Vonnegut, essays on Malcolm X and Sufism, discussions of the responsibility of the artist, reflections on her political exile from Southern Rhodesia, and a recent, remarkable memoir of her combative and complicated relationship with her mother. Witty, acute, illuminated throughout by Doris Lessing's disctinctive passionate honesty, A Small Personal Voice is a fascinating self-portrait of one of this century's most provocative and influential writers.

I have changed my mind about politics since I wrote these essays. More recent pieces are available in the new collection of interviews entitled Conversations.

Also see:

• American Edition

Included in this Edition:

On Her Life and Writings

The Small Personal Voice
Preface to The Golden Notebook
Interview with Doris Lessing by Roy Newquist
Doris Lessing at Stony Brook: An Interview by Jonah Raskin
A Talk with Doris Lessing by Florence Howe
My Father
Impertinent Daughters (not included in the American Edition)

On Other Writers

Afterword to The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
Allah Be Praised
In The World, Not of It
Vonnegut's Responsibility
Ant's Eye View: A Review of The Soul of the White Ant by Eugene Marais
A Deep Darkness: A Review of Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

On Africa

Being Prohibited
The Fruits of Humbug

A slightly shorter version of Impertinent Daughters appeared in Granta, Autumn 1984.