“A generous and pleasurable collection. . . . Vibrant and illuminating, with quotable lines on every page. . . . [Lessing is] a superb essayist: lucid, wise, knowledgeable, and witty.”— Booklist In this collection of the very best of Doris Lessing’s essays we are treated to the wisdom and keen insight of a writer who has learned, over the course of a brilliant career, to read the world differently. From imagining the secret sex life of Tolstoy to the secrets of Sufism, from reviews of classic books to commentaries on world politics, these essays span an impressive range of subjects, cultures, periods, and themes, yet they are remarkably consistent in one key regard: Lessing’s clear-eyed vision and clearly-expressed prose. But in its breadth and precision Time Bites is more: it is also a map of the human spirit and an intimate diagram of the mind of one of our greatest living writers. Lessing has been prolific for decades, writing diverse novels, short stories, plays, nonfiction, and autobiographies. She is also a superb essayist: lucid, wise, knowledgeable, and witty. Most of her conversational, fast-moving, often wry inquiries into literature, politics, and ethics were originally published in England, hence little known in America, a lack redressed in this generous and pleasurable collection. Knowing books as intimately as she does, and caring deeply about reading and writing, Lessing pens critical essays that are vibrant and illuminating, with quotable lines on every page. She writes of cats, censorship, Sufism, the exhilaration of rereading Stendhal, "book hunger" in African villages, and the nature of memory. Lessing revs up readers'love for books, observes that "the voices of common sense are always softer than the noisy rhetorics of extremism," and, in one of her more contemplative pieces, "Problems, Myths, and Stories," considers how intrinsic storytelling is to humanness, even as education loosens its connection to great literature, and the art of reading is altered by new technologies and expectations. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Eloquent, worthy essays . . . At times it’s almost as if she’s flying alongside the narrative of the book in question, observing it, telling you what she sees. And what she sees is often exactly what is needed to illuminate the book.” — Seattle Times “Declaimed in Lessing’s brisk, wry voice and articulated with pragmatic intelligence. Her literary reviews always amplify the book at hand; the pieces on Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen resonate with fresh insight . . . The main theme . . . is the indispensable place of books in the life of an educated person and an enlightened culture. Hers is a clarion call.” — Publishers Weekly “[A] generous and pleasurable collection . . . Vibrant and illuminating, with quotable lines on every page. . . . [Lessing is] a superb essayist: lucid, wise, knowledgeable, and witty.” — Booklist “Refreshing and invigorating... An invaluable collection..” — Los Angeles Times Book Review “Lessing has a first-rate critical mind. Her social and political observations are acute.” — Miami Herald “There’s much to enjoy in this collection of essays.” — New York Times Book Review “Lessing seduces the reader into investigating her favorite books . . . Time Bites is provocative in the best sense: Agreeing with Lessing or not, one comes away with the sense of a mind fully engaged with books and the world.” — Columbus Dispatch “Lessing is a passionate, generous reader and lover of books [and] the range of her literary interests is impressively wide. . . . In these pieces, we hear the tough, uncompromising, direct and courageous voice that has made Lessing an icon for freedom of thought around the world.” — Elaine Showalter, Times Literary Supplement (London) “Running through each essay is a passionate belief that humans can overcome our tendencies for ignorance and cruelty if we apply our minds compassionately to the task . . . [Lessing] possesses the open-minded curiosity of an autodidact.” — Denver Post “This book is remarkably cohesive, and one comes away with a real sense of who Lessing is and what she believes. Even when tackling complex subjects, she writes almost casually, with a conversation-like directness . . . [A] humane and truly internationalist book.” — Peter Parker, Sunday Times (London) “Each of these pieces is worth reading, and indeed re-reading, in its own right but, as an added boon, they also enrich our understanding of Lessing’s own fiction . . . The writing is full of that sympathy for the human condition that informs her fiction and there is something thought-provoking on every page. Lessing’s prose is always penetrating.” — The Times (London) “From Sufism to Mugabe, from cats to Ecclesiastes, there is something here for everyone. As in the broad-ranging empathy of her fiction, Lessing is not a fussy stylist; her overriding concern is to get to the heart of ma