The Impact of Sufism on the Fiction of Doris Lessing

This book asserts that Doris Lessing’s work is a true encapsulation of Idries Shah’s Western Sufism. In the selected novels, The Golden Notebook (1962), Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), and Re:Colonised Planet 5: Shikasta (1979) which is part of the science fiction series Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979-1983), the readers are introduced to how the former’s work, the latter’s Sufism as well as the whole cosmos are characterised by circularity. On the frontispiece of his book The Sufis, Shah writes (in graphics): “O’ Allah, please guide us to the right path”. In fact, it appears to me that he has declared his message to the world and Lessing accepts his invitation applying the Sufi doctrine to her novels. The book also explores the spiritual development of Lessing’s protagonists so as to reach perception. By portraying individualistic, societal and world unity, Lessing successfully reiterates the necessity for cosmic unity, which is highly evoked by the Sufis. To put it briefly, Doris Lessing’s fictions, especially the selected ones in this book, and Idries Shah’s Sufism are unlimitedly identical.