Most Popular Books by Ursula K. Le Guin

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 to 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.

The award-winning masterpiece by one of today''s most honored writers, Ursula K. Le Guin! The Word for World is Forest When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters. Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A slender, realistic story of a young man''s coming of age, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else is one of the most inspiring novels Ursula K. Le Guin ever published. Owen is seventeen and smart. He knows what he wants to do with his life. But then he meets Natalie and he realizes he doesn''t know anything much at all. “Like all Le Guin’s work, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else is about the invisible structures of society and about the challenge to live honestly. On a Sunday years ago I was lucky to encounter a book that could show me the breadth our lives have—that the discovery of what leads us on is better than the goal of perfection.” —Emily Schultz, Bustle “An engaging, well written novel.” —New York Times

Winner of the Locus Award • Winner of the Endeavor Award "[Le Guin] can lift fiction to the level of poetry and compress it to the density of allegory—in The Telling, she does both, gorgeously." —Jonathan Lethem Sutty, an Observer from Earth for the interstellar Ekumen, has been assigned to a new world—a world in the grips of a stern monolithic state, the Corporation. Embracing the sophisticated technology brought by other worlds and desiring to advance even faster into the future, the Akans recently outlawed the past, the old calligraphy, certain words, all ancient beliefs and ways; every citizen must now be a producer-consumer. Their state, not unlike the China of the Cultural Revolution, is one of secular terrorism. Traveling from city to small town, from loudspeakers to bleating cattle, Sutty discovers the remnants of a banned religion, a hidden culture. As she moves deeper into the countryside and the desolate mountains, she learns more about the Telling—the old faith of the Akans—and more about herself. With her intricate creation of an alien world, Ursula K. Le Guin compels us to reflect on our own recent history. Though The Telling is often considered the eighth book of the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin maintained that there is no particular cycle or order for the Ekumen novels.

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, a collection of thoughts--always adroit, often acerbic--on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION—WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters... Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

For more than four decades, Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled readers with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity. Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history. The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author''s signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it -- a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "remarkable . . . a standout." The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost, is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness. In her foreword, Ursula K. Le Guin writes, "to create difference-to establish strangeness-then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap: this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as no other." In The Birthday of the World, this gifted literary acrobat exhibits a dazzling array of skills that will fascinate and satisfy us all.

From multi-award-winning, literary legend Ursula K. Le Guin comes a speculative fiction classic, The Beginning Place. Fleeing from the monotony of his life, Hugh Rogers finds his way to "the beginning place"—a gateway to Tembreabrezi, an idyllic, unchanging world of eternal twilight. Irena Pannis was thirteen when she first found the beginning place. Now, seven years later, she has grown to know and love the gentle inhabitants of Tembreabrezi, or Mountaintown, and she sees Hugh as a trespasser. But then a monstrous shadow threatens to destroy Mountaintown, and Hugh and Irena join forces to seek it out. Along the way, they begin to fall in love. Are they on their way to a new beginning...or a fateful end? At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A wizard enters the underground domain of Ahra, high priestess of the Powers of the Earth, in an attempt to steal her palace''s greatest treasure.

Originally published in 1968, Ursula K. Le Guin''s A Wizard of Earthsea marks the first of the six now beloved Earthsea titles. Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death''s threshold to restore the balance.

This new, fifth, Earthsea audiobook pits Ged, Tenar, and Tehanu against the dead. A dragon shows the hard way to salvation.

North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness ... South to discover Antarctica with nine South American women ... West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death ... and onward to all points on and off the compass. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.

In a richly imagined, beautiful new novel, an acclaimed writer gives an epic heroine her voice In The Aeneid, Vergil''s hero fights to claim the king''s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills. Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner--that she will be the cause of a bitter war--and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life. Lavinia is a book of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.

“Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” —Ursula K. Le Guin When she began writing in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, a science fiction and fantasy author in an era that dismissed “genre” literature as unserious, and a westerner living far from fashionable East Coast publishing circles. The interviews collected here—spanning a remarkable forty years of productivity, and covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to Le Guin envisioning the end of capitalism—highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature.

Vibrantly repackaged in a stunning new format, this classic science fiction novel offers "a rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion" ("The New York Times"). In the year 2002, George Orr discovers his dreams can--and do--change the world.

Ursula K. Le Guin is the one modern science fiction author who truly needs no introduction. In the half century since The Left Hand of Darkness, her works have changed not only the face but the tone and the agenda of SF, introducing themes of gender, race, socialism, and anarchism, all the while thrilling readers with trips to strange (and strangely familiar) new worlds. She is our exemplar of what fantastic literature can and should be about. Her Nebula winner The Wild Girls, newly revised and presented here in book form for the first time, tells of two captive “dirt children” in a society of sword and silk, whose determination to enter “that possible even when unattainable space in which there is room for justice” leads to a violent and loving end. Plus: Le Guin’s scandalous and scorching Harper’s essay, “Staying Awake While We Read,” (also collected here for the first time) which demolishes the pretensions of corporate publishing and the basic assumptions of capitalism as well. And of course our Outspoken Interview, which promises to reveal the hidden dimensions of America’s best-known SF author. And delivers.

In this second novel in the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, Ursula K. Le Guin brings readers a haunting and gripping coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of violence, intolerance, and magic. Ansul was once a peaceful town filled with libraries, schools, and temples. But that was long ago, and the conquerors of this coastal city consider reading and writing to be acts punishable by death. And they believe the Oracle House, where the last few undestroyed books are hidden, is seething with demons. But to seventeen-year-old Memer, the house is a refuge, a place of family and learning, ritual and memory—the only place where she feels truly safe. Then an Uplands poet named Orrec and his wife, Gry, arrive, and everything in Memer''s life begins to change. Will she and the people of Ansul at last be brave enough to rebel against their oppressors? Voices is a novel that readers will not soon forget. “Le Guin''s crystalline prose and her ability to dramatise political and spiritual issues of our time are unequalled.” —Amanda Craig, London Times “As always, Le Guin''s language is as airy and sensuous as her concerns are weighty and abstract, every sentence as precise as a spade cut.” —Elizabeth Ward, The Washington Post “Barbarians-versus-brainiacs may be well-trod turf, but Le Guin sure-footedly makes it new. She creates a protagonist with obvious appeal to her intended audience: a geeky girl with bad hair but a quick intelligence, who nurses a seething contempt for the illiterate thugs who run everything." —Anne Boles Levy, Los Angeles Times The Annals of the Western Shore Trilogy includes: Gifts Voices Powers

A darkly compelling fantasy about a world in which each person has a magical, dangerous gift.

These five superlative, evocative and enchanting stories range from a few hundred years before A Wizard of Earthsea to just before The Other Wind, and feature some of Le Guin''s most popular characters, including the Wizard Ged himself. The stories are rounded off with an essay about Earthsea''s history and people. No Earthsea fan will want to be without this magical collection.

A revised and updated guide to the essentials of a writer''s craft, presented by a brilliant practitioner of the art

[This book] represents the first time that all of Le Guin novellas have been collected in a single volume. Featuring thirteen unforgettable stories, this literary treasure is easily one of the most anticipated collections of the year. In addition to more than 800 pages of extraordinary storytelling, [this book] also includes an introduction from the legendary author.

Frequently reissued with the same ISBN, but with slightly differing bibliographical details.

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel: A young man tries to come to grips with his strange gifts as he sets out on a dangerous journey. Brought up in comfort as a house slave for a great family, young Gavir can recall the page of a book after seeing it once. Sometimes he even “remembers” things that are going to happen in the future—a power Gav cannot explain or control, and one that his beloved older sister wisely advises him to keep secret. But when tragedy destroys his trust in all he has ever known, he flees in blind grief, setting off on a treacherous journey towards a goal he does not understand. Is Gav seeking freedom? Or his own people? Then there is the greatest mystery of all: the true use of his powers. “This follow-up to Gifts and Voices may be the series’ best installment,” raved Booklist, while the Toronto Star praised Le Guin for “her facility in world-making and her interest in human nature” in “a good, long trek of a fantasy.” Shortlisted for a Locus Award, the third book of the Annals of the Western Shore is an epic story of survival and self-discovery that brings its hero home at last to a place where he has never been before.

A young prince joins forces with a master wizard on a journey to discover a cause and remedy for the loss of magic in Earthsea.

A rich, poetic, and socially relevant version of the great spiritual-philosophical classic of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching—from a legendary literary icon Most people know Ursula K. Le Guin for her extraordinary science fiction and fantasy. Fewer know just how pervasive Taoist themes are to so much of her work. And in Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, we are treated to Le Guin’s unique take on Taoist philosophy’s founding classic. Le Guin presents Lao Tzu’s time-honored and astonishingly powerful philosophy like never before. Drawing on a lifetime of contemplation and including extensive personal commentary throughout, she offers an unparalleled window into the text’s awe-inspiring, immediately relatable teachings and their inestimable value for our troubled world. Jargon-free but still faithful to the poetic beauty of the original work, Le Guin’s unique translation is sure to be welcomed by longtime readers of the Tao Te Ching as well as those discovering the text for the first time.

One of The Atlantic''s Great American Novels "One of the greats. . . . Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon." --Stephen King "Engrossing. . . . [Le Guin] is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscape of the mind." --Cincinnati Enquirer In celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, a commemorative edition of Ursula K. Le Guin''s Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award-winning classic, a profound and thoughtful tale of anarchism and capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and one ambitious man''s quest to bridge the ideological chasm separating two worlds. This special edition includes a new foreword by Karen Joy Fowler. The Dispossessed is the spellbinding story of anarchist Shevek, the "galactically famous scientist," who single-handedly attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust. Anarres, Shevek''s homeland, is a bleak moon settled by an anarchic utopian civilization, where there is no government, and everyone, at least nominally, is a revolutionary. It has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras--defined by warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to unify the two civilizations. In the face of great hostility, outright threats, and the pain of separation from his family, he makes an unprecedented trip to Urras. Greater than any concern for his own wellbeing is the belief that the walls of hatred, distrust, and philosophic division between his planet and the rest of the civilized universe must be torn down. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and explore differences in customs and cultures, determined to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart. To visit Urras--to learn, to teach, to share--will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. Almost immediately upon his arrival, he finds not the egotistical philistines he expected, but an intelligent, complex people who warmly welcome him. But soon the ambitious scientist and his gift is seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.

When Jane, a cat with wings, leaves the safety of her farm to explore the world, she falls into the hands of a man who keeps her prisoner and exploits her for money.

PLAYAWAY: An alliance between the powerful Tevars and the brown-skinned, clairvoyant Farbons must take place if the two colonies are to withstand the fierce attack of the nomadic tribes from the north of the planet Eltanin.

James and Harriet return to the city in this second book in legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin’s bestselling Catwings chapter book series, now with a new look! As kittens, James, Thelma, Harriet, and Roger took advantage of their wings by flying away from the busy city where they were born. Now the cats live comfortably in the country with two human friends. But a big adventure is in store for James and Harriet when they decide to return to the city to visit their mother. So much has changed! The dumpster where the kittens grew up is gone. All the buildings in their old alley are being torn down. And inside one of them is a wonderful surprise, just waiting to be discovered…

These warm, funny, and eloquent poems, spanning the years 2000 to 2005, by the celebrated author of Always Coming Home and The Language of the Night, showcase Le Guin’s many facets as a writer.

Four interconnected novellas are set on the twin planets Werel and Yeowe and follow the stories of such characters as the disgraced revolutionary Abberkam, the callow "space brat" Solly, and the androgynous artist Batikam.

“Ursula Le Guin is more than just a writer of adult fantasy and science fiction . . . she is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscapes of the mind.” – Cincinnati Enquirer The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "Vaster than Empires and more Slow" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind''s Twelve Quarters.