num_pages: 432
description: "The life she describes is heroic...yet astonishingly full, with political work, writing, friendships, lovers and travel."— San Francisco Chronicle The second volume of Doris Lessing's extraordinary autobiography covers the years 1949-62, from her arrival in war-weary London with her son, Peter, and the manuscript for her first novel, The Grass is Singing, under her arm to the publication of her most famous work of fiction, The Golden Notebook. She describes how communism dominated the intellectual life of the 1950s and how she, like nearly all communists, became disillusioned with extreme and rhetorical politics and left communism behind. Evoking the bohemian days of a young writer and single mother, Lessing speaks openly about her writing process, her friends and lovers, her involvement in the theater, and her political activities. Walking in the Shade is an invaluable social history as well as Doris Lessing's Sentimental Education.
language: English
title: Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography--1949-1962
titlecomplete: Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography--1949-1962
genres: Literature, History, Womens, Autobiography, Memoir, Biography, Nobel Prize, Biography Memoir, Africa, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 386
series: Doris Lessing's autobiography
awards: awardedAt: 852105600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Biography/Autobiography
publisher: Harper Perennial