It's something that is extremely hard to do in high quality and thematically consistent but luckily Ursula Le Guin is great writer and manages to pull off something that only few authors could.Īfter all that praise why am I leaving it unrated? Simply, while I can see that why this book is great it definitely isn't my cup of tea. On one hand there is evident effort to create culture of one entire civilization with it's unique culture poetry, folktales, myths, plays and songs and all that in world that used to be technologically advance before catastrophe. This is ethnology book, the fact that it's ethnology of made up civilization in post-apocalyptic world doesn't make it less so.īecause of that I find it hard to rate this book. Second read and my opinion remains unchanged so my original reviews will remain unchanged as well. This is only book from Ursula Le Guin I didn't enjoy. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as 'Solitude' and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber.

She was known for her treatment of gender ( The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems ( The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc.

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin