You may have read everything by Ursula K Le Guin, or nothing by her, or have read different parts of the vast universe she built. Here, I present an overview of some of her work that is meaningful, available in India (and our bookstore) to read.
Earthsea
There are six books in the world of Earthsea, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970) and The Farthest Shore (1972). She continued the series years later with Tehanu (1990), Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind (both 2001). In this world, she told us the coming-of-age story of a dark-skinned wizard protagonist Ged, his journey as a young man going to a wizard’s school, and later confronting his own hubris and demons. In this world, we are shown the value of words, meeting dragons that speak True Speech that are “utterly other than human” — they are not hoarders of gold like Smaug, nor nuclear weapons in the hands of men, but beings as old as language and Earthsea. Le Guin later wondered what Earthsea looked like to the women who lived there. She explored that in writing Tehanu, which is all about women, children, the powerless and people not included in the world until that point: “unheroes, ordinary people”.
The Hainish cycle
The books of the Hainish universe could be read in any order. But according to Le Guin, the first three are Worlds of Exile and Illusion including Rocannon’s World (1966), Planet of Exile (1966) and City of Illusions (1967). These were the first three published by Le Guin and are set in the same world as The Left Hand of Darkness. This set of three books sets in motion a near-future world that Le Guin would continue to revisit, to explore interstellar diplomacy, a world without gendered power, utopia and colonialism. The Dispossessed and The Word for World is Forest are part of this universe.
Rocannon’s World (1966) is her debut novel. It is about a stranded ethnographer, Rocannon, watching the invasion of the planet he is on by a rogue, enemy planet. It is the journey of a technologically advanced interstellar mission charting a far away planet and its feudal society. Planet of Exile (1966) is about a colony of humans slowly dwindling, stranded on the planet Werel, alongside a humanoid species as the planet moves into a harsh winter. Here, the questions she looks into are about cooperation and cultural understanding between the many humanoid people who coexist in the face of a harsh environment and confronted with other primitive tribes with little or no technology. City of Illusions (1967) takes place on the Earth in the near future in a city called Shing run by aliens where humans live in pre-technological states of life. The city is invaded by aliens who run it and change the planet’s ecology and political structure.
In The Dispossessed (1974), our central character is Shevek, a physicist from Anarres, a near-uninhabitable, arid moon where revolutionary idealists have set up a society of shared resources and responsibility or an anarchist utopia where society resists individualism and propertarian language. Shevek journeys to Urras, the original society from which Anarrestis fled. Shevek is there to exchange scientific ideas, and we view Urras and its ideologies from his perspective. The book explores the ideas and practices that go into creating a communal and cooperative society, but also its flaws. The book is also about the creation of the ansible, the device that allows for instant communication across the galaxy.
Annals of the Western Shore
Annals of the Western Shore is a young adult fantasy trilogy about a world of city states in a world of great inequality in power and wealth, where a few young people have extraordinary gifts. Each book explores different parts of the Western Shore and different stories of young people.
In Gifts (2004), Orrec is a 16 year old who tells us about the stories of gifts in the Uplands which have the power to destroy everything that matters with the power of unmaking. In Voices (2006), we are in the city of Ansul where 17 year old Memer finds a room of forbidden books and learns how to read. Powers (2007) is about a slave boy named Gavir who is being educated, discovering himself in the process. The book is about the power of stories, and shows us the social milieu of the characters who who find ways to learn, read and change the world.
Other novels
The Lathe of Heaven (1971) is a book that demonstrates Le Guin’s long abiding engagement with Taoism from which she got the title: “To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven” from translations of Chuang-Tzu. In this dystopian world, we are in a city where George Orr is visiting a psychiatrist. He believes he has dreams that can alter reality, and takes drugs to suppress his dreams. He is sent to Dr William Heber the psychiatrist when the drugs lose their power, and the doctor, though sceptical, attempts to harness this power to produce steadily more unpleasant realities. As with The Word for World is Forest, dreams are central to this book, but here explore the psychiatrist desire for control in a world of radioactive, overpolluted climate change and misery.
Essays, literary reviews and non-fiction
Just a year before her passing, Le Guin put together essays and pieces she wrote from 1972 to 2014 in Dreams Must Explain Themselves from previous published collections. Waspish, funny, clear-minded and deeply nuanced, these essays traverse the ideas and themes she spent so much time thinking about in her career. The book has a loving essay about the Native Americans she grew up around, her ideas on American publishing, science fiction and fantasy, her mother’s life as a writer, and the very famous speech she gave in the National Book awards ceremony in 2014: “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings”. This powerful collection can help annotate and expand your understanding of the worlds she built so deftly and firmly, and give us an insight to her decades-long career.
Crafting with Ursula
If you are interested in thinking with Ursula K Le Guin, ‘Crafting with Ursula’ is a wonderful series of conversations with different authors who were inspired by her work, hosted by the thoughtful and gentle David Naimon as part of his longform podcast Between the Covers.
You can explore all of Ursula K Le Guin's books in our book store, or make your own gift box. You can buy the first of our new series of 'Author Notes' that we released upon screening the film Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin by Arwen Curry.
Kavya Murthy is a writer and editor. As a reader, she is looking for herself on the pages of queer histories and literature, enjoys dragons, sentient robots and gut-wrenching plotlines about the human condition.