IJSRP, Volume 4, Issue 10, October 2014 Edition [ISSN 2250-3153]
Hossein Shamshiri
Abstract:
The Noble Prize winning Doris Lessing created a flurry of discussion about her relevance to spiritualism, mysticism, and Sufism after her turn from realism to speculative fiction. It is the purpose of this study to show that Lessing’s proclivity for portraying imagined worlds in her later speculative space fiction reflects a paradigm shift that sheds light on the contemporary apocalyptic climate of clashing moral certainties. In her space fiction novels, the most important of which is Shikasta, Lessing, like a prophet, captured a zeitgeist and unveiled the wounds of our time. By analyzing the narrative techniques that Lessing uses in Shikasta I try to prove that Shikasta is central in Lessing’s prolific oeuvre because it so clearly sets forth the basic terms of her debate about universal identity and the way that it can be represented through fiction. My main discussion is that Lessing’s epistemology and ontology can be embodied in her belief in the Utopian future of the earth; the narrative structure of Shikasta shows that such a Utopia or Paradise can be regained by practicing the spiritual practices of Sufism.