When it was first published in 1985, Ursula K. Le Guin’s ambitious and experimental novel Always Coming Home, a tapestry of interwoven stories, poems, histories, myths, and anthropological reports from the fictional Kesh society, included one chapter from a short novel called Dangerous People by Arravna, or Wordriver, which Le Guin had “translated” from the Kesh, the invented language of an invented people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now” in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley, California. Now Library of America presents, for the first time, the full text of the innovative and perceptive novella Dangerous People, which Le Guin completed shortly before her death, making this Le Guin’s final new work. The story of one missing woman and the people around her who may or may not be implicated in her death or disappearance, Dangerous People explores larger questions about what—in relationships, in society—make a person “dangerous”; and in giving us the Kesh perspective, Le Guin ultimately shines a light on our own society’s perceptions of truth, gender, and relationships.

This book critically examines Le Guin's fiction for all ages, and it will be of great interest to her many admirers and to all students and scholars of children's literature.

in a career spanning half a century, Ursula K. Le Guin has produced a body of work that testifies to her abiding faith in the power and art of words. She is perhaps best known for imagining future intergalactic worlds in brilliant books that challenge our ideas of what is natural and inevitable in human relations—and that celebrate courage, endurance, risk-taking, and above all, freedom in the face of the psychological and social forces that lead to authoritarianism and fanaticism. it is less well known that she first developed these themes in richly imagined historical fiction, including the brilliant early novel Malafrena. An epic meditation on the meaning of hope and freedom, love and duty, Malafrena takes place from 1825 to 1830 in the imaginary East European country of Orsinia, then a part of the Austrian Empire, a nation which, like its near neighbors Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, has a long and vivid history of oppression, art, and revolution. itale Sorde, the idealistic heir to Val Malafrena, an estate in the rural western provinces of Orsinia, leaves home against his father’s wishes to work as a journalist in the cosmopolitan capital city of Krasnoy, where he plays an integral part in the revolutionary politics that are roiling Europe. Complete with a newly researched chronology of Le Guin's life and career.

An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.

Here for the first time is the complete suite of five linked stories from Ursula K. Le Guin’s acclaimed Hainish series, which tells the history of the Ekumen, the galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain. First published in 1995 as Four Ways to Forgiveness, and now joined by a fifth story, Five Ways to Forgiveness focuses on the twin planets Werel and Yeowe, two worlds whose peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain future after civil war and revolution. In “Betrayals” a retired science teacher must make peace with her new neighbor, a disgraced revolutionary leader. In “Forgiveness Day,” a female official from the Ekumen arrives to survey the situation on Werel and struggles against its rigidly patriarchal culture. Embedded within "A Man of the People,” which describes the coming of age of Havzhiva, an Ekumen ambassador to Yeowe, is Le Guin’s most sustained description of the Ur-planet Hain. "A Woman’s Liberation” is the remarkable narrative of Rakam, born an asset on Werel, who must twice escape from slavery to freedom. Joined to them is “Old Music and the Slave Women,” in which the charismatic Hainish embassy worker, who appears in two of the four original stories, returns for a tale of his own. Of this capstone tale Le Guin has written, “the character called Old Music began to tell me a fifth tale about the latter days of the civil war . . . I’m glad to see it joined to the others at last.”

The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions—and snares—of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.

'A rich and complex story of friendship and love' GUARDIAN 'It's a giant thought experiment that's also a cracking good read about gender' Neil Gaiman 'Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new' Two people, until recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous and dangerous journey across the ice. One is an outcast, forced to leave his beloved homeland; the other is fleeing from a different kind of persecution. What they have in common is curiosity, about others and themselves, and an almost unshakeable belief that the world can be a better place. As they journey for over 800 miles, across the harshest, most inhospitable landscape, they discover the true meaning of friendship, and of love. Readers love The Left Hand of Darkness: 'This book overwhelmed me with how good it was, and how different it ended up from what I expected . . . a deep story of humanity, love, betrayal, alienation, and acceptance' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'The world is so rich in detail that it becomes an adventure to explore it, and the nuanced character dynamics keep the pages turning . . . a fabulous exploration of fluid gender and sexuality' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'This novel is just the right balance of nuance, world-building and philosophical musings that culminate into a staggeringly empathetic work . . . a great work of feminism' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'A masterful and visionary story, one of the most beautiful SF novels I have read' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'A landmark in the field of science fiction literature . . . This is a story about loneliness and need for closeness as well' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'Ursula K. Le Guin asks, what if gender were not fixed, but serially changeable? . . . The Left Hand of Darkness is a book about journeys, both literal and metaphorical. It is that rare and precious thing: an original and mind-opening book' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐