"I was brought up on the farm in the bush, which was the best thing that happened, it was just a wonderful childhood. One of my most formative experiences was listening to my mother playing Beethoven and Chopin on the piano and listening to the drums playing in the compound: two kinds of music playing together. And as a child I didn't see any reason why they shouldn't be played together, you had to be much older to understand that African drums and Chopin weren't really a part of the same phenomenon."

Doris Lessing
Women Writers
BBC World Service