The Telling - Hardcover

Ursula K. Le Guin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151005672 ISBN 13: 9780151005673

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000

Synopsis

An observer from Earth for the interstellar Ekumen, Sutty is assigned to a new world in which a ruthless monolithic Corporation, seeking rapid technological advancement, has outlawed ancient beliefs and customs, but as Sutty journeys deep into the countryside and mountains, she discovers the Telling, the old faith of the Akans, a banned religion that teaches her about the meaning of her own existence. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Ursula K. LeGuin was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California, and lives in Portland, Oregon. She has won many Nebulas and Hugos, as well as a National Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Newbery Honor, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

Reviews

In this virtually flawless new tale set in her Hainish universe, Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness; Four Ways to Forgiveness) sends a young woman from Earth on her first mission, to the planet Aka as an Observer for the Ekumen. Although well prepared for her role, Sutty has been horribly scarred by her past. She grew up gay in a North America badly damaged by ecological stupidity and the excesses of a fundamentalist state religion called Unism. Traveling to Aka, she expected (and had been trained) to deal with a peaceful, essentially static culture based on an ancient, all-encompassing belief system akin to Taoism and known as the Telling. When she arrived, however, she discovered that during the decades it took her to reach the planet, Aka's culture has been radically transformed. The Telling has been all but banned, replaced by a soulless form of corporate communism. It becomes Sutty's task to take a harrowing journey into the high mountains, searching for the last, priceless depository of Akan traditional culture before it can be destroyed. As Le Guin notes in her preface, similarities to China during the Great Leap Forward are not entirely coincidental. Although this is a political and philosophical novel of the purest sort, it is anything but dry. With an anthropologist's eye, Le Guin develops her Akan culture in great detail, as she does her characters. Sutty is an entirely successful viewpoint character, a quirky mixture of competence and intense emotion. The Monitor, her primary nemesis on Aka, is nearly as compelling. This is a novel that aficionados of morally serious SF won't want to miss. (Sept.) FYI: Le Guin is the winner of several Nebula and Hugo awards for outstanding SF, as well as of a National Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Newbery Honor and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Le Guin's latest (Unlocking the Air, 1996, etc.) belongs to her Hainish cycle-Hain being the planet that originally seeded Earth, and many other worlds, with the human species; now the Hainish are revisiting lost worlds and drawing them into the benevolent Ekumene. Sutty, the envoy to planet Aka, grew up on an Earth ruled by a repressive religious dictatorship. Aka is run by a capitalist dictatorship, the Corporation. Sutty lives in Dovza City, full of good corporate citizens, but is not allowed to visit anywhere else. In its zeal to become a star-traveling civilization, the Corporation burns books and destroys vestiges of the planet's past-before unauthorized fanatics from Earth wrenched Aka's development onto its present path. Finally, Sutty receives permission to visit a remote mountain region, though she's dogged by a Monitor, a true believer and Corporation informer. From the mountain folk, who passively resist the Corporation, Sutty learns about the extraordinarily diverse, vital, integrated culture that once existed on Aka. Fascinated, she joins a spiritual pilgrimage to the sacred mountain, Silong, the secret repository of saved books and historical treasures. But can Sutty use her knowledge of the old and new Akan cultures to broker a deal to save Aka's treasures and moderate the worst excesses of its corporate state?The usual mesmerizing Le Guin narrative and intensity of concept, but too one-sided to provoke resonance or plumb the depths. First printing of 75,000; author tour -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

As a member of the Ekumen's embassy on the planet Aka, Sutty undertakes a delicate mission that leads her to a mountain village reported to contain the last remnants of a dying culture. Following a trail of subtle clues concealed in stories and folk sayings, Sutty discovers the suppressed history of a planet willing to abandon its old ways in the name of progress. Le Guin's latest addition to her "Hainish" cycle (e.g., Rocannon's World) continues her exploration of human culture and society through the filter of the far future. (Le Guin was inspired by Chairman Mao's brutal suppression of Taoism in China.) This parable of the modern world's headlong rush toward monocultural sterility exemplifies the author's elegant simplicity and keen insight. A priority purchase for libraries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151005672
• ISBN 13: 9780151005673
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272