Nobel 'a Royal Flush' For Doris Lessing

She was married, and divorced, twice. She is the mother of three children -- two of whom were just toddlers when she left their father and gave up raising them to focus on a life of political activism.

In the mid-1950s, Lessing was a member of the Communist Party in London. She actively and outspokenly opposed nuclear weapons and the race-based governments of South Africa and Rhodesia. For years, she was barred from parts of Africa because of her critical writings.

In 1950, she published her first novel, "The Grass Is Singing," the story of love torn apart by race and class. Her most recent work, "The Cleft," is a battle-of-the-sexes tale published this year.

All in all, Lessing has written nearly 50 books. Her best known, perhaps, is "The Golden Notebook," published in 1962, a pioneering book on male-female relations, according to the academy, that helped inspire the burgeoning feminist movement.

Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho said yesterday that Lessing is a writer who is "capable of daring" and who goes "beyond her limits, which makes her one of the best writers of our times."

One of Lessing's long suits "was her piercing social commentary, which was so much a part of her novels, " said Thomas F. Staley, director of the University of Texas research center where Lessing's archives are collected. "It created interest in her work all over the world."

During the 1960s, Staley said, "she was a real cleareyed critic of the world situation as she saw it."

Speaking to the Associated Press, critic Harold Bloom was not so kind. He said the academy's choice is "pure political correctness."

He added: "Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable."

Critics may bicker, but Lessing has loyal readers. Jan Hanford, who has run DorisLessing.org -- a tribute Web site -- for 12 years, said, "For me, her writing communicates ideas and an understanding of the truth that is both moving and profound. And she is an extraordinary storyteller."