Gifts, Ursula K. Le Guin
Gifts, Ursula K. Le Guin
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Gifts

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrator: Jim Colby

Unabridged: 6 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 02/20/2008


Synopsis

In this beautifully crafted novel, the first of the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of the proud cruelty of power, of how hard it is to grow up, and of how much harder still it is to find, in the world's darkness, gifts of light.

Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the clans of the Uplands possess gifts.

Wondrous gifts: the ability—with a glance, a gesture, a word—to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land. Fearsome gifts: They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness.

The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another. Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts.

One, a girl, refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other, a boy, wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill.

"A brilliant exploration of the power and responsibility of gifts."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

About Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography.

Ursula has influenced such Booker Prize winners and other writers as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell-and notable science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She has resided in Portland, Oregon since 1959.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brad

Dear Ursula Le Guin, You've given me many gifts over the years, and I cherish them all, so it is fitting that your most recent gift is a book of the same name. I know it is not the favourite of many of my friends who love your work too, and I don't know if I can even call it a favourite, but I accep......more

Goodreads review by Anthony

I will never lose my awe of the late, great Ursula K. Le Guin’s immense talents. Her precision, her depth of feeling, her abiding subtlety, her facility of grappling with profound questions of what it means to be human, her regard for the inherent mysteries involved in being human, her love of langu......more