The $1.6 million prize was won by the Briton, who was born in Persia (Iran), raised in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and now resides in London. The soon-to-be eighty-eight author never finished high school. She has written dozens of books of fiction and many plays. She has also penned nonfiction and an autobiography. She is the eleventh woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (The other ten are: 1909: Selma Lagerlöf, 1926: Grazia Deledda, 1928: Sigrid Undset, 1938: Pearl S. Buck, 1945: Gabriela Mistral, 1966: Nelly Sachs, 1991: Nadine Gordimer, 1993: Toni Morrison, 1996: Wislawa Szymborska, and 2004: Elfriede Jelinek.)

Ms. Lessing’s breakthrough novel, which inspired a generation of feminists, was The Golden Notebook. The Swedish Academy, in its citation said, “The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.” Other novels by Ms. Lessing include: The Grass is Singing, The Good Terrorist, Love Again, and The Cleft, published this past July by HarperCollins.