Doris Lessing, a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and essayist whose deeply autobiographical books and piercing social commentary made her one of the most significant and wide-ranging writers since World War II, died Sunday at her home in London. She was 94.

Her publisher, HarperCollins, announced the death but did not disclose the cause.

Lessing's literary reach touched on relationships between men and women, racism, colonialism, feminism, communism, aging and terrorism. A perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature, she won the coveted award in 2007.