Laureate Lessing Says No New Novels

Nobel literature prize winner Doris Lessing says she is unlikely to write a new full-length novel, according to excerpts of an interview released Sunday.

In extracts of a British Broadcasting Corp. interview, Ms. Lessing said that winning the prestigious prize had been "a bloody disaster."

The 88-year-old author said she no longer has the energy to take on writing a full novel, blaming constant media demands.

"All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed," Ms. Lessing was quoted as saying in the radio interview, which will be broadcast Monday.

Ms. Lessing — the author of more than 50 novels, volumes of short stories, memoirs, and plays — was named the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature in October. The Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, praised her "skepticism, fire and visionary power."

Ms. Lessing was born in Persia — now Iran — and raised in Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe. Her most influential book is considered to be "The Golden Notebook," published in 1962 and regarded as a feminist classic.

But Ms. Lessing, the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history, said she is now finding it difficult to write.

"It has stopped; I don't have any energy any more," she was quoted as saying.

"This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever," she said, according to the BBC. "Use it while you've got it because it'll go. It's sliding away like water down a plughole."