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The Birthday of the World

And Other Stories

By Ursula K. Le Guin

(10)

| Hardcover | 9780066212531

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Book Description

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 novelContinue

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.

Critics

  • The Best Reviews: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Birthday Of The World

    "Deep science fiction anthology" Fans of deep science fiction that stars aliens in order to dig into the human condition will want to read Ursula K. Le Guin's powerful anthology. The eight stories are all excellent as each one looks into a "excursion ... (read full critics)

    thebestreviews published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

  • The Birthday Of The World

    Ursula K. Le Guin is one of those authors who--like Jack Vance--has an unmistakeable voice. In fact, reading The Birthday Of The World, her new collection of short stories, I was for the first time struck by a resemblance between her work and that of ... (read full critics)

    infinityplus published on Tue, 31 Aug 2010

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9780066212531 Hardcover $24.95 -- The Book Depository
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