"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Telling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

Hainish Universe, Book Six
Ursula K. Le Guin
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
 Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Earthling Sutty has been living a solitary, well-protected life in Dovza City on the planet Aka as an official
Observer for the interstellar Ekumen. Insisting on all citizens being pure "producer-consumers," the tightly
controlled capitalist government of Aka--the Corporation--is systematically destroying all vestiges of the
ancient ways: "The Time of Cleansing" is the chilling term used to describe this era. Books are burned,
the old language and calligraphy are outlawed, and those caught trying to keep any part of the past alive
are punished and then reeducated. Frustrated in her attempts to study the linguistics and literature of
Aka's cultural past, Sutty is sent upriver to the backwoods town of Okzat-Ozkat. Here she is slowly
charmed by the old-world mountain people, whose still waters, she gradually realizes, run very deep. But
whether their ways constitute a religion, ancient traditions, philosophy, or passive, political resistance,
Sutty is not sure. Delving ever deeper into her hosts' culture, Sutty finds herself on a parallel spiritual
quest, as well.
With quiet linguistic humor (Dovza citizens are passionate about their hot bitter beverage, akakafi
--the ubiquitous Corporation brand is called Starbrew), dark references to the dangers of restricted
cultural, political, and social freedom, and beautifully visualized worlds, award-winning author Ursula K.
Le Guin pens her latest in the Hainish cycle, which includes The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of
Darkness. Le Guin explores her characters and societies with such care, such thoughtfulness, her novels
call out for slow, deep attention. --Emilie Coulter --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
In this virtually flawless new tale set in her Hainish universe, Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness; Four
Ways to Forgiveness) sends a young woman from Earth on her first mission, to the planet Aka as an
Observer for the Ekumen. Although well prepared for her role, Sutty has been horribly scarred by her
past. She grew up gay in a North America badly damaged by ecological stupidity and the excesses of a
fundamentalist state religion called Unism. Traveling to Aka, she expected (and had been... read more
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Spotlight Reviews
Welcome return to Ekumen in novel form, September 5, 2000
Reviewer:

"The Telling," like Le Guin's 1972 novella "The World for Word is Forest," is much more about our
own world than the world it explores.
Here, a lesbian woman of East Indian descent, Sutty, signs on to be an ambassador for the Hainish
Ekumen (the Hainish originally seeded human life on all the member planets) when her lover is killed by
fundamentalist terrorists on earth.
But in transit, relativity plays a cruel trick on her: In the 60 years she's been traveling in a
Nearly-As-Fast-As-Light starship, the planet Aka has adopted a severe, technophilic society not unlike
that of Maoist China. Indeed, the Corporation State has done its best to eradicate its previous culture, a
Tao-like, creedless system of wisdom known as "The Telling."
Sutty eventually travels to a distant, mountainous place where people secretly maintain their old
system, and there she discovers how her own planet Terra may have catalyzed the culture-destroying
changes.
As in Le Guin's 1969 classic, "The Left Hand of Darkness," the protagonist enters the society hoping
to learn, and eventually undertakes a journey, this time deep into the heart of the high mountains. Here,
the village of Ozkat-Ozkat is sharply reminiscent of Chinese-occupied Tibet.