In Gratitude

In August 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given ‘two or three’ years to live. She didn’t know how to react. All responses felt scripted, laden with clich?. Being a writer, she decided to write about it (grappling with the unoriginality even of this), and also tell a story she has not yet told: that of being taken in, aged 15, by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent 50 years of their complex relationship.