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Always Coming Home: A Novel
| Title | Always Coming Home: A Novel |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2024-10-13 04:51:36 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
“One of [Le Guin's] most radical novels. . . . Astudy in what a complete and utter rejection of capitalism and patriarchy might look like—for society and for the art of storytelling.""—The MillionsReissued for a new generation of readers and listeners, Always Coming Home is Ursula K. Le Guin’s magnificent work of imagination, a visionary, genre-crossing story about a future utopian community on the Northern California coast, hailed as “masterly” (Newsweek), “hypnotic” (People) and “[her] most consistently lyric and luminous book” (New York Times). This new edition features an introduction by Shruti Swamy, author of A House is a Body, as well as illuminating extra materialthat includes interviews and liner notes to the book's musical soundtrack.Midway through her career, Le Guin embarked on one of her most detailed, impressive literary projects, a novel that took more than five years to complete. Blending story and fable, poetry, artwork, and song, Always Coming Home is this legendary writer’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley.Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated “translations” that illuminate individual lives, including a woman named Stone Telling, who travels beyond the Valley and comes to reside with another tribe, the patriarchal Condor people. With sharp poignancy, Le Guin explores the complexities of the Kesh’s unified society and presents to us—in exquisite detail—their lives, histories, adventures, customs, language, and art.In addition to poems and folk tales, Le Guin created verse dramas, records of oral performances, recipes, and even an alphabet and glossary of the Kesh language. The novel is illustrated throughout with drawings by artist Margaret Chodos and includes a musical component—original recordings of Kesh songs that Le Guin collaborated on with composer Todd Barton—bringing this utterly original and compelling world to life.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. Read more
Review
This book is a marvelous collection of "an anthropology of the future." LeGuin excavates stories, songs, beliefs, myths, traditions, and more of the people who "will be might have been" someday living in what is now Northern California. At once Utopian and Dystopian, the culture that LeGuin shares with us is beautiful and complex.I read this book when it was first published in paperback in the mid-80's. It planted and nurtured in me a seed of hope that humans are capable of someday living in community in different ways than we do now. It opened in my imagination doors that I had never before noticed. Here is an example of a new narrative structure, or anti-structure. Here, too, is an example of a new-old social structure, a post-modern tribalism that has returned to "traditional" values such as living in harmony with oneself and one's environment, and recognizing the strength and beauty in ritual and tradition.Though others (including she) may disagree, I personally have always considered this work Mrs. LeGuin's crowning achievement. As Tolkien did in his Middle Earth stories, LeGuin in "Always Coming Home" creates a new-old world that is unfamiliar yet recognizable, someplace we want to go back to again and again. We are lucky indeed that this book is now back in print!
