- Novels
- The Grass Is Singing (1950) (filmed as Killing Heat (1981))
- Retreat to Innocence (1956)
- The Golden Notebook (1962)
- Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971)
- The Summer Before the Dark (1973)
- Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
- The Diary of a Good Neighbour (as Jane Somers, 1983)
- If the Old Could... (as Jane Somers, 1984)
- The Good Terrorist (1985)
- The Fifth Child (1988)
- Love, Again (1996)
- Mara and Dann (1999)
- Ben, in the World (2000) – sequel to The Fifth Child
- The Sweetest Dream (2001)
- The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (2005) – sequel to Mara and Dann
- The Cleft (2007)
- Alfred and Emily (2008)
- The Children of Violence series
- Martha Quest (1952)
- A Proper Marriage (1954)
- A Ripple from the Storm (1958)
- Landlocked (1965)
- The Four-Gated City (1969)
- The Canopus in Argos: Archives series
- Shikasta (1979)
- The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980)
- The Sirian Experiments (1980)
- The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982)
- The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983)
- Opera libretti
- The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (music by Philip Glass, 1986)
- The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (music by Philip Glass, 1997)
- Comics
- Playing the Game (graphic novel illustrated by Charlie Adlard, 1995)
- Drama
- Each His Own Wilderness (three plays, 1959)
- Play with a Tiger (1962)
- Poetry
- Fourteen Poems (1959)
- The Wolf People – INPOPA Anthology 2002 (poems by Lessing, Robert Twigger and T.H. Benson, 2002)
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- Short story collections
- Five Short Novels (1953)
- The Habit of Loving (1957)
- A Man and Two Women (1963)
- African Stories (1964)
- Winter in July (1966)
- The Black Madonna (1966)
- The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (1972)
- This Was the Old Chief's Country: Collected African Stories, Vol. 1 (1973)
- The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories, Vol. 2 (1973)
- To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories, Vol. 1 (1978)
- The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories, Vol. 2 (1978)
- Through the Tunnel (1990)
- London Observed: Stories and Sketches (1992)
- The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches (1992)
- Spies I Have Known (1995)
- The Pit (1996)
- The Grandmothers: Four Short Novels (2003)
- Cat Tales
- Particularly Cats (stories and nonfiction, 1967)
- Particularly Cats and Rufus the Survivor (stories and nonfiction, 1993)
- The Old Age of El Magnifico (stories and nonfiction, 2000)
- On Cats (2002) – omnibus edition containing the above three books
- Autobiography and memoirs
- Going Home (memoir, 1957)
- African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe (memoir, 1992)
- Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (1994)
- Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949 to 1962 (1997)
- Other non-fiction
- In Pursuit of the English (1960)
- Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (essays, 1987)
- The Wind Blows Away Our Words (1987)
- A Small Personal Voice (essays, 1994)
- Conversations (interviews, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, 1994)
- Putting the Questions Differently (interviews, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, 1996)
- Time Bites (essays, 2004)
- On Not Winning the Nobel Prize (Nobel Lecture, 2007, published 2008)
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