'One Half the World was Hungry' THE EVOLUTION OF DORIS LESSING'S CRITIQUE OF GLOBAL HUNGER IN IN PURSUIT OF THE ENGLISH, THE SUMMER BEFORE THE DARK, AND ALFRED AND EMILY

摘要

Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing's novels illustrate a number of different intersections between food and culture that increase in urgency over the years as her tone moves from observation to critique to polemic. An early semi-autobiographical work, In Pursuit of the English, portrays a working-class Italian woman's ingenuity in producing a Mediterranean diet in London during 1950s rationing. A mid-career feminist novel, The Summer Before the Dark, satirizes the globalization of food and international food agencies. Her final work, Alfred and Emily, a memoir of her parents and her childhood in Africa, combines her memories of African agricultural abundance with an impassioned plea for an ecological approach to land and an ethical distribution of food.