Four Ways to Forgiveness

Paperback, 252 pages

Published by Gollancz.

ISBN:
978-0-575-60175-8
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4 stars (1 review)

At the far end of our universe, on the twin planets of Werel and Yeowe, all humankind is divided into "assets" and "owners," tradition and liberation are at war, and freedom takes many forms. Here is a society as complex and troubled as any on our world, peopled with unforgettable characters struggling to become fully human. For the disgraced revolutionary Abberkam, the callow "space brat" Solly, the haughty soldier Teyeo, and the Ekumen historian and Hainish exile Havzhiva, freedom and duty both begin in the heart, and success as well as failure has its costs.

In this stunning collection of four intimately interconnected novellas, Ursula K. Le Guin returns to the great themes that have made her one of America's most honored and respected authors.

9 editions

Determined to like Le Guin's fiction

4 stars

Four long-ish stories set in the same universe, and all dealing with what it means to be free (from slavery, from oppression, from ignorance...). I once read an essay by Ursula Le Guin (Introducing myself) and my life was forever changed, or at least so I felt. As a result, I have the utmost admiration for her, and am determined to appreciate her fiction, too. With Four Ways to Forgiveness, I'm finally making good progress. It takes time and effort to grasp and process the histories of these worlds, with the social systems they produced. The good news is that it is worth. There are also some great characters and story lines in here, and the writing is very skillful.