Where to start with Doris Lessing

British novelist, 1919–2013.

Best Doris Lessing book to start with: The Golden Notebook (1962), on 6 of the 17 lists it could have made.

The Good Terrorist, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1985, is the friendliest first Lessing. The lists put The Golden Notebook first, but that book is long and built in an unusual way, and this one is a clearer introduction. A woman in her thirties drifts into a squat in London with a group of young political activists and ends up looking after them. It is observant and often funny.

In The Golden Notebook a writer keeps four notebooks to organise her life, and the structure takes a while to make sense, so read it once you have enjoyed another of hers.

Memoirs of a Survivor is short and strange: a woman looks after a girl in a city that is falling apart. Briefing for a Descent into Hell, shortlisted in 1971, follows a man in hospital whose mind has gone somewhere else. The Sirian Experiments, shortlisted in 1981, is science fiction, and it is for readers who already like her.