Dreams must explain themselves and other essays, 1972-2004

No cover — Ursula K. Le Guin: Dreams must explain themselves and other essays, 1972-2004 (2018)

388 pages

English language

Published Jan. 21, 2018

ISBN:: 978-1-4732-0594-9
OCLC Number:: 920854560

(1 review)

"Ursula K. Le Guin has won or been nominated for over 200 awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master Awards. She is the acclaimed author of the Earthsea sequence and The Left Hand of Darkness - which alone would qualify her for literary immortality - as well as a remarkable body of short fiction, including the powerful, Hugo-winning 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' and the masterpiece of anthropological and environmental SF 'The Word for World is Forest' - winner of the Hugo Award for best novella. But Ursula Le Guin's talents do not stop at fiction. Over the course of her extraordinary career, she has penned numerous essays around themes important to her: anthropology, environmentalism, feminism, social justice and literary criticism to name a few. She has responded in detail to criticism of her own work and even reassessed that work …

"Ursula K. Le Guin has won or been nominated for over 200 awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master Awards. She is the acclaimed author of the Earthsea sequence and The Left Hand of Darkness - which alone would qualify her for literary immortality - as well as a remarkable body of short fiction, including the powerful, Hugo-winning 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' and the masterpiece of anthropological and environmental SF 'The Word for World is Forest' - winner of the Hugo Award for best novella. But Ursula Le Guin's talents do not stop at fiction. Over the course of her extraordinary career, she has penned numerous essays around themes important to her: anthropology, environmentalism, feminism, social justice and literary criticism to name a few. She has responded in detail to criticism of her own work and even reassessed that work in the context of such critiques. This selection of the best of Le Guin's non-fiction shows an agile mind, an unparalleled imagination and a ferocious passion to argue against injustice. In 2014 Ursula Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and her widely praised acceptance speech is one of the highlights of this volume, which shows that one of modern literature's most original voices is also one of its purest consciences."--Publisher description.

1 edition

franksbooks reviewed Dreams must explain themselves and other essays, 1972-2004 by Ursula K. Le Guin

Review of 'Dreams must explain themselves and other essays, 1972-2004' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I love Ursula Le Guin for her Fantasy novels, but most especially for the characters that emerge from the blank parts of the map in those novels – whether it is Shevek, Tenar, Ged or Genly Ai.

In Dreams Must Explain Themselves we’re provided with access to Le Guin’s mind through a broad, deep selection of her essays drawn from more than three decades of her illustrious career. Essays which provide insights into her thinking about the craft of writing, both her own and others, among many other topics.

From criticism of Lessing‘s Science Fiction and Twain‘s Adam and Eve Diaries via an assessment of the rhythm in Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings to a long discourse on... gavincostello.wordpress.com/2020/10/27/dream-must-explain-themselves/

Subjects

American essays