‘I have a friend from Zimbabwe. A writer. Black – and that is to the point. He taught himself to read from the labels on jam jars, the labels on preserved food cans. He was brought up in an area I have driven through, an area for rural blacks. The earth is grit and gravel, there are low sparse bushes. The huts are poor, nothing like the good cared-for huts of the better off. A school – but like one I have described. He found a discarded children’s encyclopaedia on a rubbish heap and learned from it.’

Lees hele speech op http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates2007/lessing-lecture_en.html