The series will launch with two books that have already been published in Hungarian: The Grass is Singing and The Fifth Child.
Lessing was born in 1919 in Kermanshah, Persia (present-day Iran), where her father, an English captain who lost a leg in WWI, had moved to take a job as a bank clerk. In 1925, the family moved to Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) to farm maize, but with limited success.
Largely self-educated, Lessing left school at the age of 14 and started work as a nursemaid at 15. She began reading about politics and sociology. She married twice and had three children before leaving Africa, with her youngest son in 1949 to move to London. There, her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published. The book, which examines the tensions between whites and blacks in the country where Lessing grew up, was well received in both the UK and the US.
Lessing has since written more than 50 books. Among her oeuvre are novels, short stories, a graphic novel, plays, non-fiction and two operas - a collaboration with Philip Glass. Lessing's The Golden Notebook, an examination of a woman torn between emotional, social and creative demands, has become a touchstone of feminism.
Lessing has always been socially and politically engaged, taking a firm stand against colonialism and racism early on. Fearless about her position on these and other issues, Lessing also shows an unusual bravery when it comes to genres, writing science fiction with the same confidence as works of high literature.
The Swedish Academy announced in October it awarded this year's Nobel Prize for literature to Lessing, "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."
