The Birthday of the World: And Other Stories
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About this book
Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit a master storyteller with the humor and force of a Twain. . . . The Birthday of the World is prime new Le Guin. Like a tour of other countries these splendid and necessary stories will send you back home with new eyes. Boston Globe 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. In The Birthday of the World she 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 authors signature world of the Ekumen "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows " as Le Guin describes ita 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 Le Guin writes "to create differenceto establish strangenessthen 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.
