Human Conditions: 'The Golden Notebook' by Doris Lessing

Published 2024-07-09

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss ‘The Golden Notebook’, Doris Lessing’s formally brilliant and startlingly frank 1962 novel. In her portrait of ‘free women’ – unmarried, creatively ambitious, politically engaged – Lessing wrestles with the breakdown of Stalinism, settler colonialism and traditional gender roles. Pankaj and Adam explore the lived experiences that shaped the novel, its feminist reception and why Pankaj considers it to be one of the best representations of ‘the strange uncapturable sensation of living from day to day’.

This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: apple.co/3pJoFPq

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Further reading in the LRB:

Anita Brookner: Women Against Men
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n16/anita-brookner/wom…

Frank Kermode: The Daughter Who Hated Her
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n14/frank-kermode/the-…

Jenny Diski: Why can‘t people just be sensible?
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n15/jenny-diski/why-ca…

Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books exploring different periods of literature through a selection of key works. Enjoy an introductory grounding like no other from Europe's leading literary journal: fluent, rigorous, irreverent and never boring.

Find more episodes here: • Close Readings

Running in 2024:
ON SATIRE with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell
HUMAN CONDITIONS with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
AMONG THE ANCIENTS II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones

Plus two bonus series:
MEDIEVAL LOLS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
POLITICAL POEMS with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

Also included in the Close Readings subscription, the full series of:

AMONG THE ANCIENTS I with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
MEDIEVAL BEGINNINGS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
THE LONG AND SHORT with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
MODERN-ISH POETS: SERIES 1 with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry

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