I would be describing a disgust and self-division which afflicts people now, and not only artists. In describing the reasons for the block, I would also be making the criticisms I wanted to make about our society. I found that, if it were to be written at all, the subject should be, not a practising artist, but an artist with some kind of a block which prevented him or her from creating. Yet, having decided not to write it, I continued to think about it, and about the reasons why artists now have to combat various kinds of narcissism. I saw no point in writing this again: it has been done too often it has been one of the major themes of the novel in our time.

Lessing says: 'About five years ago I found myself thinking about that novel which most writers now are tempted to write at some time or another - about the problems of a writer, about the artistic sensibility. It is a masterpiece in portraiture of the manners, aspirations, anxieties and the particular problems of the times in which we live. The Golden Notebook is the longest and the most ambitious work Doris Lessing has ever attempted to write.

In 2005, TIME Magazine called 'The Golden Notebook' one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

Author of the golden notebook