The Great Political Fictions: The Golden Notebook

In today’s episode David explores Doris Lessing’s bold and brilliant The Golden Notebook (1962), a book about female emancipation, political disillusionment and much, much more. Why did Lessing insist that the novel’s original critics misunderstood what the book was about? What makes her description of joining and then leaving the Communist Party in 1950s London different from any other account? How did a book about mental disintegration capture the essence of the age?