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Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

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(Hardcover)

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  • Publisher: Harcourt
  • Pub. Date: April 2008
  • ISBN-13: 9780151014248
  • Sales Rank: 15,679
  • 279pp
 
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The Barnes & Noble Review

Ursula K. Le Guin channeling Frank Miller? The poet of the bucolic utopia portrayed in Always Coming Home echoing the macho war cries of 300? The sensitive chronicler of the hermaphroditic culture of The Left Hand of Darkness engaging in the rough-and-tumble brawling characteristic of Sin City? Well, yes and no, but perhaps more yes than no.

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Synopsis

in The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word in the poem. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to make her own destiny, and she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.

Lavinia is a book of love and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.

The Washington Post - Eve Ottenberg

[Le Guin] focuses this engaging novel on Aeneas's Latin wife, who is only sketchily depicted in the epic poem. In simple, stately prose that does no violence to Vergil's work, Le Guin presents the rough, unpretentious dignity of the ancient pagans. She also portrays daily life in the Bronze Age, some time after the 13th century B.C., when duty and responsibility glue the community together…there is plenty of action in Lavinia. Even her happy marriage is filled with musings cleverly ancient yet modern—most compellingly on the expectations of women. By telling this story from its heroine's clear, forthright perspective, Le Guin has taken the cipher that is Vergil's Lavinia and given her a new life.

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Biography

Ursula K. Le Guin's first story was rejected by Amazing Stories -- back when she was 11 years old. Since then, Le Guin has become one of science fiction's most critically acclaimed authors, as well as a versatile writer of poetry, children's books, essays, and nonfiction.

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