Time bites: Views and reviews - Doris Lessing (First UK edition)

'The approach to old age, that Via Dolorosa, is presented to us as a long descent after the golden age of youth... But now start the delightful surprises. Best of all, not ever predicted nor, I think, described, a fresh liveliness in experiencing. This must be what a very small child feels, looking out at the world for the first time: everything a wonder. Old age is a great reviver of memories, in more ways than one.'

Towards the end of his long life, Goethe said that he had only just learned how to read. In this collection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays – never before published in book form – we are treated to the wisdom and keen insight of a writer who has herself learned, over the course of a long, rich life, to read the world differently. From imagining the secret sex life of Tolstoy to the secrets of Sufism, from reviews of classic books to tales of her beloved cats, these essays span a huge range of subjects, cultures, periods and themes, but they are utterly consistent in one key regard: Lessing's clear-eyed vision and clearly-expressed prose. This is a book about books and writers – Stendhal and Muriel Spark, Pride and Prejudice, Bulgakov and Clarissa – but in its breadth and precision, Time Bites is also a map of the human spirit, of our hopes, fears and basic needs; and on a more personal level, a map of the wonderful, searching mind of one of our greatest living writers.