Ursula K. Le Guin stond bekend om haar scherpe verkenningen van gender, politieke systemen en anders-zijn. Haar werken putten vaak uit een diep begrip van de antropologie, wat bleek uit haar creatie van ingewikkelde fictieve samenlevingen. Via haar vertellers, vaak gezanten, onderzocht ze de ontmoetingen en interacties tussen uiteenlopende culturen en werelden. Le Guin gebruikte haar kenmerkende vertelling in de eerste persoon om de lezer diep onder te dompelen in de essentie van menselijke ervaring en anders-zijn.
Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the timeless and beloved A Wizard of Earthsea. Includes six novels, short stories and non-fiction, and with over fifty illustrations by Charles Vess
In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination. Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: 'before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.' Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero's long, hard, killing tools, our ancestors' greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars. This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota: unknown lands where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew. With a new introduction by Donna Haraway, the eminent cyberfeminist, author of the revolutionary A Cyborg Manifesto and most recently, Staying with the Trouble and Manifestly Haraway. With images by Lee Bul, a leading South Korean feminist artist who had a retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery in 2018.
"This fifth volume in the definitive Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's work presents a trilogy of coming-of-age stories set in the Western Shore, a world where young people find themselves struggling not just against racism, prejudice, and slavery, but with mysterious and magical gifts. Includes Gifts, Voices, and Powers"-- Provided by publisher
One of the very best must-read novels of all time'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power' OBSERVER
A master builder of faraway, fantastic worlds, Ursula K. Le Guin, at mid-career, found in her native California the inspiration for what was to be her greatest literary construction: nothing less than an entire ethnography of a future society, the Kesh, living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley. This Library of America edition of her 1985 classic Always Coming Home, prepared in close consultation with the author, features new material added by Le Guin just before her death, including for the first time the complete text of the novella-within-the-novel, Dangerous People. Survivors of an ecological catastrophe brought on by heedless industrialization, the Kesh live in hard-won balance with their environment and between genders. Le Guin meditates here more deeply and more personally on themes explored earlier in The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Always Coming Home is comprised of "translations" of a wide array of Kesh writings: a three-part narrative by a woman named Stone Telling recounting her travels beyond the Valley, where she lives with the mysterious, patriarchal Condor people; "Chapter 2" of a novel by the brilliant Kesh writer Wordriver, in which a woman's disappearance reveals hidden tensions within and beyond her clan; poems; folk tales for adults and children; verse dramas; recipes; even an alphabet and glossary of the Kesh language. To this extraordinary architecture, Le Guin has added a special section of new material, including the two "missing" chapters of Wordriver's Dangerous People, newly discovered poetry and meditations of the Kesh people, and a guide to their syntax. With evocative illustrations by artist Margaret Chodos-Irvine, and Le Guin's own hand-drawn maps, the cumulative effect is, in the words of Samuel R. Delany, "Le Guin's most consistently lyric and luminous book."
Ursula K. Le Guin's poetry encapsulates themes of freedom, human bravery, and the intricacies of nature, reflecting her lifelong exploration of creativity. This definitive volume brings together her verse, from her first collection, Wild Angels, to her last, So Far So Good, along with sixty-eight previously uncollected poems. The edition includes a new introduction by Harold Bloom and selections of her prose on poetry, offering insight into her artistic journey and the profound ideas that permeate her work.
Featuring a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, on fantasy and science fiction, on writing, and on the future of literary science fiction. “We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.” —Ursula K. Le Guin Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator. The book and each thematic section are brilliantly introduced and contextualized by Susan Wood, a professor at the University of British Columbia and a literary editor and feminist activist during the 1960s and ’70s. A fascinating, intimate look into the exceptional mind of Le Guin whose insights remain as relevant and resonant today as when they were first published.
'Her most important book since ALWAYS COMING HOME and her most satisfactory collection since her first, the brilliant, THE WIND'S TWELVE QUARTERS. A formidable and rewarding work, a prime candidate for best SF collection of the year. An essential book.' LOCUS Six of the eight piece are set in Le Guin's classic Hainish cycle. The title story, 'The Birthday of the World', stands alone and the final piece, 'Paradises Lost', is a new short novel original to the collection, a major addition to the generation starship subgenre of science fiction.
The Earthsea books follow the fortunes of the wizard Ged from his childhood to an age where magic is giving way to evil. As a young dragonlord, Ged, whose use-name is Sparrowhawk, is sent to the island of Roke to learn the true way of magic. A natural magician, Ged becomes an Archmage and helps the High Priestess Tenar escape from the labyrinth of darkness. But as the years pass, true magic and ancient ways are forced to submit to the powers of evil and death.
