Each week, the National Book Critics Circle will post a list of five books a critic believes reviewers should have in their libraries. We recently heard from recent Nobel Prize winner (and former NBCC finalist) Doris Lessing, whose most recent book of criticism was “Time Bites.” She very kindly provided us with five titles. Here are the books she named:
The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Anna Karenin, by Leo Tolstoy
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust
Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Doris Lessing is one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Her most recent books include “The Cleft” and “The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter Griot and the Snow Dog,” the two volumes of autobiography, “Under My Skin” and “Walking in the Shade,” and the anthology of articles and reviews, “Time Bites.” A Companion of Honour and a Companion of Literature, she has recently been awarded the Nobel Prize. She lives in North London.