In addition to questions of narrative in fiction and film, we find Lessing's complex representations of what I would term ‘the cinema mind’. The art of writing itself was, moreover, undoubtedly shaped and altered by the modes of representation which developed in the film medium, in ways which could be creative as well as restrictive. The work of many writers, novelists and dramatists found new life on the screen through adaptation.

As with many of her contemporaries, there is at times a perception of the threat which cinema represented to authors, competing for their readers as it turned them into spectators and, more dangerously, with the Hollywood machine imposing a restrictive set of narrative norms on authors. Yet in a number of her works we can locate the multiple influences of cinema.

The relationships between writers and the cinema in the twentieth century have received significant critical attention, but the work of Doris Lessing has not, to date, played a central role in explorations of this topic.

Doris lessing the grass is singing